Love Compatibility Test: How will I know he's the one?

It would really be great if such a thing existed out there in the world. All you’d have to do is get out your trusty credit card, put in your number and the perfect questions to tell you each whether you were compatible would pop right up. And off into the sunset you’d go – either together or apart - depending on the results of the test.

That might have worked when you were 14. Some teen magazine created the test. You took it and found out yes or no.

Or you might count on the info you get from your local or online astrologer. Maybe they do know but truly, how to know if he’s the one or not is not that hard. The information is right there inside you.

Every time he makes you happy, he’s the one. Every time he does something that upsets you, angers you, hurts your feelings or makes you feel small, he is not the one. If he continues to hurt your feelings and make you feel small, he is not the one.

Now I am not so naïve as to think it’s that simple. But it could be. Here’s what you have to do to make it that simple. You have to find a way to listen to, discern and trust the emotional feedback your body gives you. You know what I’m talking about although you may not realize it.

Next time you get angry or feel sad, notice what’s going on in your body. Next time you are wildly happy, notice that and what it feels like in your body. What are you feeling right now? Are you having what you’d call a good day? Or are you having what you’d call a bad day? It isn’t the events that usually make the day good or bad. It is your emotional reaction to the events that make you interpret it as good or bad. When you start looking internally, you will know the information you are looking for when it comes to the person you are trying to know your compatibility with.

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “It’s an inside job.” It is an inside job because human beings have a full range of biochemicals that flow throughout our bodies and let us know if we are happy or sad, angry or joyful. So that’s where the compatibility test answers are – inside you.

But you searched and found this article because you aren’t clear - which means something is blocking you from knowing your own truth. These are the kinds of things that block women from knowing:

1. They have a hard time understanding their emotions.


2. They started a physical relationship before they really knew the guy and become confused because their hormones and emotional vulnerability is totally triggered. This is not a moral judgment but rather a reality for women.


3. They are carrying a lot of emotional baggage from the past and it is confusing the current situation.


4. They have low self esteem and want to hold onto anyone as long as someone will stay with them.

So if you want to know if he is the one, you have to allow yourself to feel your feelings and acknowledge what they are telling you. If all this idea does is leave you feeling confused, then I can promise you you need some help in getting back in touch with your feelings. Go seek help before you make any decisions about who is “the one”.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Having a Mindfulness of My Age

Law of Attraction and Aging

With our human mind's penchant for assigning meaning to things, we have all assigned meanings to certain ages. I know you will easily be able to imagine a 2-year-old, a 22-year-old, a 70-year-old. Easy, you say. You may all have a different picture of each age because your mind assigns it one "look" and mine assigns it another but it'll be close. I'd guess that this is somewhat societally and/or culturally influenced also. But if we could draw what we imagined, we'd probably often have a similar picture.

Other places on this site and other things you might have read have informed you how we create our lives. We have a thought; the thought creates feelings; our feelings create a certain vibration; our little super highway in our brains, our neuronet, keeps thinking the thought and we keep creating the feelings which create our predominant vibration and - voila! - it (whatever we've been thinking about over and over) is created in our lives. So over and over and over we think and picture and feel about being 35 or being 60 and when we get there to that age, there we are. We created just what we thought of over and over and over.

I am 71. My mother died at 57 so I don't really know what a 71-year-old woman looks like in my family - and that's a good thing (not good that my mother died so young but good that I have no picture of it). So I just look like and feel like a person who has woken up each morning for over 69 years, breathing and in the same body.

So to me any age means how long you have woken each day and fulfilled the requirement of breathing through that day . That's all it means.

So what does age mean to you? The thing is, you are free to choose.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Even Life Coaches Need Self Help Solutions

Law of Attraction and Me

When you read around this blog, you might get the impression that I have it all under control. Many experts talk and act as if they have resolved every issue in their lives - particularly the ones they teach about. Let me assure you that although I feel as if I have something to teach and offer you, I don't feel I have it all down. I still have me to deal with.  I need my own self help solutions. My perspective on that is that I need reminders of what it's like so I keep fresh in my teaching. Having watched a person become famous and how challenging that is for the ego, I think it helps in that aspect too.

So, I do teach and talk about the Law of Attraction and what it takes to create what you want. I talk about the neuronet and the emotions and how to create your own self help solutions. This page has a good array of those topics. Here I'd like to talk about two I haven't mentioned yet. I need these to change my emotional viewpoint when I woke up today.

• Talking yourself down - Abraham Hicks talks about this. Example: this morning I woke up seeing the glass half empty. A few days ago over 650 people came to look at my site. I was so excited and the day after, when that number went down to the 100+ area, I told myself that the 650 was a great place to keep focused on and visualize and expect. Well, today I could only see low, low, low. So here's the first thing I did. I started talking myself down saying things like this to myself: "OK. So you feel this way now and you've felt this way before about things and you know pretty soon this will change. Your thoughts and feelings come and go. Remember when you just knew that the big number was just a point of power not a point to beat yourself up about." As I did this I started to feel a little better. Instead of resenting my husband for the lousy way he completed the kitchen clean-up, I let in a few thoughts about how great he was to keep helping. Then, instead of taking what felt like the longer route of continuing to talk to myself, I hit on the idea of #2.

• Uplifting distraction - I put on my IPOD and listened to my favorite music.  I usually listen to music while doing housework instead of just do cleaning.  I lose myself in my music and don't even realize what I'm doing. And best of all, all thoughts immediately stop. By the time I'm finished, I feel good about my accomplishment and the music has done its magic.  I  like John Denver, Shanti Shanti, the Beatles and other folks who do music that inspires me - often with spiritual themes.

So those are two more of my tricks to self-coach me which you certainly can borrow. Most important is my attitude that no bad mood is worth the so-called luxury of feeling lousy. Find out what self help solutions work best for you.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Self Worth? Resistance Revisited

Most of my work on myself and my continuing journey is to expand my self-love and self-care having followed a lifelong path out of self esteem and self worth issues.

In light of that and because my muscles start hurting if I don’t do it, I’ve taken up yoga. I love it. So as I was showering this morning I was noticing resistance. And I don’t like resistance and I don’t want it but if I push against it, it pushes back.

So instead I asked myself what the resistance to yoga was about. And here’s what I got: it’s about allowing myself the time. My mind says, “You could be working on your coaching programs or washing dishes or .....” whatever.

I realize that my mother never let herself spend any time on self care and unwittingly made it a value to be taken on and honored. She told me with great disdain for our neighbor walking down the street in her tennis dress: “Exercising is vain.”

So, "Resistance, you are just a mask for keeping me loyal to that unconscious value. You may leave. Your job has been done. You tried very, very hard and long to hide the truth from me and did a  really great job of it.

Now I know a different truth, I AM WORTHY OF MY OWN TIME AND ATTENTION."

What are you resisting that is really good for you?


YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

13 Ways to Improve Self Esteem

Many people go through life with low self esteem. This is a sad, but true, fact that is made sadder by the fact that it doesn't have to be that way. Every person on the planet is a special, unique person and deserves all good that comes along. Everyone deserves to feel good about themselves. Many of the littlest things in life can do so much to improve self esteem.

To improve self esteem you can:

• Smile at the people who come across your path today.
• Find something funny to laugh about.
• Turn negative thoughts into positive ones and see what happens.
• See what you can learn from what happens in your life.
• List all your positive attributes.
• Ask your close friends and family what they love about you - and let it in.
• Do something for someone that they don't expect and let them express gratitude.
• Do something wonderful and kind for someone that they know nothing about.
• Compliment the grocery checkout person.
• Make a "To Do" list and check off each thing as you accomplish it.
• Do something that scares you a little.
• Learn something new.
• Forgive someone.

These things are so simple to do that you will be amazed at what happens when, for example, you do something nice for someone for no reason, do something that scares you a little, learn something new and you feel better about yourself. What have you accomplished besides spreading some joy? You have worked to improve self esteem.

There are endless possibilities to love others and yourself. And remember to accept what you can't change. Give it a shot for a day or two and see how much better you feel about yourself.

Self esteem is not a static thing. If you pay close attention and focus on each day instead of making broad statements about yourself and to yourself, you may begin to see that some days you feel not so bad about yourself. Those would be good days to improve self esteem so that on your low self esteem days, you can begin to look back and see that you are doing something to change it. Even acknowledging to yourself that you are working towards feeling differently about yourself, will help you improve your self esteem. It is not very much fun to walk around feeling badly about yourself. It tends to be a self perpetuating situation where feeling badly about yourself supports you to do things that make you feel badly about yourself. Work done to improve self esteem will change your world and you are worth it.

You University Emotion-Based Coaching

How To Deal With Long-Term Depression

by Gina Bendel

For most of my life I suffered from depression.  I tried to understand it, tried to soothe it, tried to sweep it under the rug and ignore it.  I even tried to cover it up with laughter and a well-thought up façade – my mask to the world!  I tried counselors, tried medication – the list goes on and on!!  Nothing seemed to work for very long and I was REALLY sick and tired of feeling so miserable all the time.

Because of an amazing life coach whose program, YOU University, I credit to saving me from myself and because I was truly ready to overcome the feelings of deep depression I had lived with since I can remember, I learned that I needed to delve deeper to the roots - the core beliefs and experiences from the time I was born and up until my current life – all of which brought me to where I was (and where I was would be considered desperate – hanging on a cliff by only my fingernails)!  I needed to face all I had learned by my experiences, analyze it and learn new habits and thought patterns that would give me back my authentic self – the real genuine Gina that was hidden beneath all the crap.

To overcome long-term depression takes dedication and real work.  I learned the things that did not work for me long term (or for any of the people I know suffering from long-term depression).  Some of these are:

• Anti-depressants (this only numbs the depression for short periods of time and doesn’t deal with the core issues)


• Covering it up with what you think the world wants to see


• Pretending it doesn’t really exist & refusing to discuss your feelings


• Self medicating by numbing the painful feelings with alcohol or drugs


• Being unwilling to work on uncovering and resolving the issues


• Holding emotions inside and not resolving them


• Carrying resentment, anger, shame, guilt and/or not being able to forgive someone who has hurt you deeply in some way


• Running away from the problems

Here are a few things I have learned DO work:

1. Get to the root of the depression – be willing to look in depth at how you came to be depressed in the first place.


2. Learn tools to replace the negative self-talk and self-loathing or “victim mentality” that often accompanies depression with positive self-talk and love for yourself.  Be willing and open to creating new life-time habits.


3. Imagine what it feels like to be happy – paint a picture in your mind of this new, happy you.  What do you look like?  Where are you living?  Who are you with?  See it, smell it, taste it and create a visual piece that you can look at every day.  What you envision, you can attract!


4. Write about it.  Journaling has enormous benefits in helping you to get your emotions out in a constructive, healthy way.   Simply pick up a piece of paper and start writing whatever is on your mind or in your heart.  It truly is remarkable how much better it can make you feel by releasing your emotions in this way!


5. Start a gratitude list. Every time you think of it or notice yourself feeling badly or talking about what’s wrong, go write on your list.I know how debilitating long-term depression can be.   Nobody should have to continue that downward spiral.  If anything in this article resonates with you and you would like some guidance, please check out the following site where you can read about the journey I took through YOU University.

Radical Self Acceptance/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Addictions To Work?

Workaholic Who Loves Her Work?

Do "good" workaholics figure out how to love their work so they can still work a lot?

I think society defines a workaholic as someone who uses work as an addiction. And addictions are supposed to be about running away from feelings or dealing with feelings in an unhealthy manner.

So what I am asking is - am I still a workaholic even though now I love my work?

Many years ago I was a financial planner/financial salesperson. I worked at that job addictively. I think the feeling I was running away from with that job was guilt for not working enough and making enough money.  What a lose/lose proposition that my ego set up: if I overwork, I don't feel guilty for not working but in order to not feel guilty for not working, I had to work 70-80 hours a week. No matter I hated the job. No matter I had young kids and left them a lot. No matter that although I did make very good money, I didn't have the positive feelings of self worth or consciousness to be able to feel comfortable with it and so it magically disappeared all the time.  It was an addiction.

Today, I totally love what I do for a living. I coach people to move from one place in their life to another place they'd rather be. Usually I'm working with them closely as they grow as a person in all areas of their lives from relationships to work to writing or creating other ways and many other aspects of their lives they begin to look at through their new glasses or more self worth and a higher level of self acceptance. Since watching people grow is my favorite activity, I love every minute of it.

Also, my work allows me to teach. I get  to watch my own process to see how I have grown or how I wish to grow. I watch my husband, my kids, my friends. I keep learning and teaching. And I get to write about all of this growth and my observations about it.

And yesterday I noticed something about myself. I have a little trouble just doing nothing. I'm fine if I have an activity scheduled over the weekend but just plain do-nothing time, feels uncomfortable.

Could a symptom of workaholism be feeling guilty if I'm not working - even on the weekend and even if I love my work?

Another question I have is - are negative aspects catchable from our partners? My husband usually appears to feel a little guilty when he isn't working enough. I think I caught it guilt-for-not-working from him.

Or maybe it was the fact that my mother made a very big deal to my sister and I about how hard and how many hours my father worked to take care of us. This, I believe, was her attempt to control us and keep us from asking for too many material things so she wouldn't feel guilty saying no. Additionally, to give it a double whammy, she bitched at my father without cease about his working all the time - how it was his way of running away from his family.

Looking back with adult, non-victimy eyes and from many years distance, I think that my mother's impact is the source of my incipient workaholism. Also, as a kid I think I absorbed the righteousness of working a lot. In a certain way it sounded martyrish and even attractive to "sacrifice for your family". I think I thought if I worked and sacrificed, I'd be admired and appreciated.

Oh, what an awful muddle  the past's effects are on us!

Radical Self Acceptance/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

Is Life Coaching a Good Second Career?

Is Being a Life Coach for You?

As people live longer, their life vision tends to be larger. Some people want to go back to school and then have a second or third career. My husband, at age 70, began his 5th career - this time as a high school Physics teacher.

As a life coach you not only have the ability to help people change their lives, you also get to share your expertise and knowledge and pass it onto others. So, if, for example, you worked many years in a corporate environment, you might quite naturally begin to coach people who are currently in a corporate environment themselves on issues they run across. You have been there and done that.

Many people have lead fast track careers that have taken them up the corporate ladder and around the world. Others have built successful businesses from the ground up. Still other have transformed lives that began in highly dysfunctional families. They then transformed the lives of their families and their own into something magnificent based on the learning and healing those early lives led to. These experiences and others can create a basis for a rewarding second career of life coaching. To get more information, contact me at 310-264-5625 Pacific time 9am to 2pm or email me at maiaberens@youuniversityonline.com.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

How a Coach Can Help You to Build a Sense of Trust

Trust Builds One Little Notch at a Time

Each time you tell a person how you feel and they don't reject your for it, trust builds. Not only that - you will have a relationship based on who you authentically are. No mask to come off later and disappoint the other person because they thought you were someone else - the one with the mask.

Anyone who is attracted to reading something called  How a coach can help you to build a sense of trust most likely has some trust issues. Those issues impact us in many ways. Following are some examples:

Personal relationships - "What if I'm myself and you leave me?" That is often the basic reason people get into poor relationships in the first place. They ignore their own inner knowledge of themselves by acting how they think the other wants them to act.

Work relationships - "Can I really allow myself to trust anyone who I don't know well or in a job situation?"  They don't trust people to be supportive and authentic.

Making decisions - "I'm really not sure what to do." They have a hard time because they don't trust themselves.

How can a life coach help you with these difficult situations?

When you talk to someone weekly who always supports your agenda, tells you the way they see things in your life quite openly and who has an attitude that your answers are in you, you begin to trust that person.

When that life coach also keeps pointing out the ways your attitudes and emotional responses are right, you begin to trust that person more. And you begin to trust yourself more.

As you experience success after success in support of yourself, you eventually become a trusting person because you know you have the information inside you that will steer you where you want to go in your life. You will know if a person is trustworthy in your personal and work relationships and you will trust yourself to make decisions.

That is one of the things an experience of life coaching can provide you.

Radical Self Acceptance/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

Law of Attraction - Goethe Knew the Secret

Radical Self Acceptance/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Commitment

Begin It Now!

I've been dabbling around in personal and spiritual growth for around 35 years - a long time. I've learned a lot and seen trends and think, sometimes, that something was gimmicky or flat and then, all of a sudden I awake! It really isn't just a saying. It's the truth. Below is a quote from Goethe which I had learned when I started working for a "New Age" sales manager in 1986. At the time I was just attracted to the novelty of  spiritual realization and had not really made a commitment to my spiritual growth.  The quote:

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.

Goethe

All of a sudden the other day part of the quote popped into my head, "Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now." In a nutshell, that is the Law of Attraction. If you can see it or dream it, you will attract it - the power and the magic. The only caveat is you REALLY have to believe it. And for me and most others, it is a gradual process - not an overnight event. The step you must take is to commit. It is the difference between thinking of something and doing.  It could take time but the main step is commitment.

Radical Self Acceptance/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

Is it SEX or is it INTIMACY? The View from Mars

by Maia's Martian

Yesterday evening Maia and I were talking  and she brought up the topic about how having sex too soon (whatever that means) in a new relationship sometimes seems to confuse things for women and not always in a good way.

Because I am wired and socialized as a Martian my first impulse was to think “the more sex the better and the sooner the better, what’s wrong with that?”

As I thought about my own experience however, I realized that there is more to it than that and so here is  the view from an older Martian after 30 years in a successful relationship:

The word intimacy usually is a more polite way to say “sex”.  Here is a more inclusive meaning of intimacy - INTO-ME-SEE -  which maybe means “through sex we are able to know each other.”

And that is the gift of an intimate long term committed relationship. You develop  a mirror to each other’s Soul. In simple terms you get to see the Real You and the Real Her reflected  through each other’s eyes on a daily basis. How incredible is that? Maybe women already know this but I know from being a man for almost 80 years that most men don’t know that is even possible.

Think of sex as a door that opens into a room where you will find this gift of discovering each other's Soul.

The difficulty is that Martian DNA  is only about opening as many doors as possible. However, if doors are too easy for a man to open then they will never venture into the room and discover the gift.

Opening the door is easy, finding who you and she is (the Real You) takes a long term committed relationship.

So, in answer to the question of how soon to have sex in a new relationship, it is and always was totally up to the individuals involved and hopefully after reading this you are able to make a decision that comes from a higher consciousness.

Radical Self Acceptance/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

Self Awareness - the Way to See Your Personal Development Progress

Self Awareness

Just want to say a word about my journey. I see through my own self awareness that I have come such a long way. I noticed this when observing my reactions with clients calling or not calling. When it comes to wondering if someone will actually call to become my client when they say they are going to.

I used to fret and worry and take their calling - or not - very personally. I was sure it was a rejection of me. My mind got very loud and plugged into old self esteem issues.

I see how much better my reaction is now. Through my own growth and self awareness I know my own strengths and gifts.  I do know what I give my clients and what benefits they gain. My mind tries to go back to my old ways, like a tongue with a space where a tooth used to be, but it’s little and light compared to the past.

But whether it is a potential client not calling back or my own adult child not liking something I am or am not doing, I am grateful for my progress. I am self aware and I see a peaceful and growing woman.

Radical Self Acceptance/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

A Simple Test to Know If Your Relationship Is Working

Is it giving you energy - or taking your energy?

Sometimes we like to stay in denial about our relationships. We can't really tell if it's working or not. Sometimes it's as if we just don't want to know - or at least our ego doesn't want to know because then it will mean change and our egos HATE change.

So here's the simple test: Stop. Think of your relationship. Pay attention to your body. Does thinking of it make you happy to think about it or leave you feeling dull, hurting, confused, wishful, pained, __fill in the blank__________. If it leaves you feeling anything like that, you've got problems.

I've had three varieties. The first one was started when neither of us had a clue about how to do have a relationship. I felt hurt, fearful, unhappy and want to leave almost every day for 15 years. I'm pretty sure he did too. We were young and did not know how to treat each other well.

The second one would have been the kind to fool most anyone. He was a really nice person. He tried to be a partner but there were the sneaky ways he didn't tell the truth about himself and what he was up to; the ways I felt wistful that maybe I made a mistake; the discomfort of the imbalance in contributions to our financial well-being with no real desire on his part to improve himself. It might have confused me if I hadn't had my long and hard disaster before it. I knew I couldn't hold onto something that wasn't working well EVER AGAIN.

I think making that decision was what led to the over 25 year never a question, always good and working partnership I have allowed in my life. No confusion. Hurts dealt with right away. Very clearly a well working success story.

What will it take for you to decide to have a good relationship?

Radical Self-Acceptance/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

The Importance of Emotional Health

My family knows what my life is about. They know that I am a big proponent of authentic expression of feelings in pursuit of mental, spiritual and emotional health. With that in mind, my daughter sent me to this site: We Feel Fine . Their mission is as follows:

Mission

We Feel Fine is an exploration of human emotion on a global scale.

Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). Because blogs are structured in largely standard ways, the age, gender, and geographical location of the author can often be extracted and saved along with the sentence, as can the local weather conditions at the time the sentence was written. All of this information is saved.

The result is a database of several million human feelings, increasing by 15,000 - 20,000 new feelings per day. Using a series of playful interfaces, the feelings can be searched and sorted across a number of demographic slices, offering responses to specific questions like: do Europeans feel sad more often than Americans? Do women feel fat more often than men? Does rainy weather affect how we feel? What are the most representative feelings of female New Yorkers in their 20s? What do people feel right now in Baghdad? What were people feeling on Valentine's Day? Which are the happiest cities in the world? The saddest? And so on.

The interface to this data is a self-organizing particle system, where each particle represents a single feeling posted by a single individual. The particles' properties – color, size, shape, opacity – indicate the nature of the feeling inside, and any particle can be clicked to reveal the full sentence or photograph it contains. The particles careen wildly around the screen until asked to self-organize along any number of axes, expressing various pictures of human emotion. We Feel Fine paints these pictures in six formal movements titled: Madness, Murmurs, Montage, Mobs, Metrics, and Mounds.

At its core, We Feel Fine is an artwork authored by everyone. It will grow and change as we grow and change, reflecting what's on our blogs, what's in our hearts, what's in our minds. We hope it makes the world seem a little smaller, and we hope it helps people see beauty in the everyday ups and downs of life.

It is my experience that feelings and thought walk hand in hand to create our vibration.  The emotional health of our vibrations is how the Universe decides what to send our way. Do you attract fabulous stuff? Do you attract not so fabulous stuff? Your creation is dependent upon your emotional health.

http://www.radicalselfacceptance.guru/ 

Resolution without Shame

If you read my earlier post called “To Coach a Friend or Not to Coach a Friend”, here’s the update. Friend and I had an appt. yesterday at 10a.m. I had offered to place the call because I have flat rate long distance service and I offer that to all of my clients if they want it. So I called at 10 and the line was busy. I called at 10:03, 10:05 and 10:08. Same result. Then I wrote the following email:

Hi,
I’ve tried your number now about 4 or 5 times for our 10a.m. call this morning.  It’s busy. It’s looking like you have a lot of resistance going on to this coaching relationship. You’ve forgotten an appt, had a repair man appear at the time of the call and now the phone’s busy. No blame. Just something for you to investigate. However, I don’t want this to affect our relationship so I leave it to you to contact me and you will probably have to kind of talk me into the efficacy of this part of our relationship. Hope all is well. I’m off to do errands.

She called later. She wrote about what is happening with her and took responsibility. But for now I want to deal with how the coach handles the situation. This is tricky business. Even though you are hired to help a client overcome their resistance or uncover and meet their goals and speak the truth as you see it, there is a fine line you walk as a coach.

Will it be too much for them to handle? Will they retreat, blame you (even just in their mind) and quit coaching? Or will they be glad you are helping them move forward through the tough stuff? There are no right answers here. It takes experience, awareness, self-confidence, a strong bond with your client and probably many things I’m not thinking of right now.

The main  focus   is to  point  out the truth  without  shame. We are not trying to shame  our clients. We  want them to grow and find  resolution.  Being able to break  down resistance without  guilt  can  sometimes  be difficult if we are  unwilling to forgive ourselves.  This can  be hard  for clients  to overcome,  or  anyone for that matter.

Results in this case? Our friendship is unimpaired. I may provide some support but she won’t feel guilty or unsupported and I won’t feel drained or overly responsible for her. I consider this a success.

Radical Self Acceptance/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Positive Thinking and the Economy Go Together

If I hear "this economy" one more time..!

I know that we all can individually have an impact on this world, whether it is through our negative or positive thinking. So if we focus on our positive thinking and this economy, could we change this negative light that surrounds the world right now? I remember hearing Carolyn Myss talk about the fact that we all like to bond with each other by talking about our wounds. Well, she's right. Almost everyone I talk to these days wants to say those two words in the title to me with a certain negative emotional oomph. Because I know how Law of Attraction works and because I am experiencing a tremendous amount of prosperity in my life, I'm not buying into this attempt to pull the planet in a negative direction. We have enough of that.

Abraham Hicks says we get more of what we focus on which is another way of talking about Law of Attraction.

Question: So what if you are in a job you're not crazy about and you also think this isn't the right time (see title) to try to change jobs? How can you still vibrate at a rate that will attract your desired outcomes and will feel good in your body?

Answer : Use your job experience as a way to grow yourself. Learn how to change your attitude about it and watch yourself go through that process. Find the good/lesson in this change and focus on your positive thinking.

Example from my life: In 2001 my husband and I lost all our money. We were 58 and 66 respectively. In 2003 my then 70-year-old husband got himself hired by Los Angeles Unified School District as a high school Physics teacher. Imagine starting a new career with 100+ inner city teenagers in your classes daily and of completely different background than he ever interacted with much and that's what his daily work life is like. Imagine also being required to fulfill a 3-year Master's equivalent program at the same time. Here's how he's handled it:

• He uses it to grow his organization abilities which he's ignored throughout his life.


• He uses it to watch himself become an amazing teacher.


• He uses it to see if how he could offer these kids a faster track into a successful life than their background, education and financial situation would normally allow.


• He uses as a way to keep him taking care of his body so he can do it. You should see him doing pull ups, push ups and using Wii Fit.

I could go on and on about him but I think you can see he's taken full responsibility for his life and his attitude and treats this situation as a way to grow. He's gained so much by feeling in charge of his life.  Rather than moaning about the state of our finances and how unlucky we were, he focused on his positive thinking and it has made all the difference.

How can you make use of your job or career to grow as a human and make a positive thinking contribution to the planet?

http://www.radicalselfacceptance.guru/ 

Who better to write about a husband wife relationship than me?

The reason I can say that is that I’ve had three – and they couldn’t be more different:

Husband Wife Relationship #1

We were 18 when we met, 22 when we married and we didn’t have a clue who we were or how to have a functional relationship – with ourselves or each other. I came from what is politely called a dysfunctional family and I wore all the hallmarks – low self esteem, poor self image on a physical and personality level. I thought I was defective and not good at anything and so would never find another partner. That’s why I married who I did. By the time we were dating for 6 months I already experienced his mean and controlling ways. He experienced my victimy and wimpy emotional untruth. I never stood up for what I thought or felt. I was too damaged and immature. This mess that we created together lasted for a total of 19 years. We split a month before our 15^th anniversary.

Husband Wife Relationship #2

By this time, a short 2 ½ years a nice man who I had been dating asked me to marry him. He was nice; not scary in any way and had built in grandparents and family for my four children. I can’t say I particularly cared about being married but he was nice…..

I had had a couple of years of 12-Step programs and had figured out that I could at least support me and my family and there was no longer abuse in my life so why not?

Six months later I ended it. I had become  bitten by the personal growth bug and was choosing to live a very different way then I had ever before – one with me telling myself the emotional truth – stepping out of denial and finding that I couldn’t give another chunk of my life to another albeit milder form of dysfunction in a husband wife relationship.

Husband Wife Relationship #3

We met in a personal growth workshop where we learned and practiced emotional healing and telling the emotional truth. We were friends for two and half years and knew each other very well before we began our relationship. We had relationship tools that I never knew existed and that worked to keep us from ever harboring resentments and being inauthentic or dragging our past into our present relationship. For 27 years and counting we have a wildly successful and happy husband wife relationship.

Now that you're done, I have one thing left I'd like you to do.

I'd love to hear your thoughts so comment below and (uh oh this is 2) please follow this blog over there on the right. I'd love to get to know you.

Radical Self Acceptance/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Starting Your Path to Emotional Healing

Emotional Healing

If something keeps happening in your life it is time to learn from it. If a pattern of bad habits or unrealistic expectations keep coming into your life, ask yourself what kind of emotional healing do I need to exercise?

As I have been life coaching it has become a clear pattern: some people will not face old feelings. Some of those say they will go work it out with a therapist but they don't seem to do that. They go find a therapist who doesn't actually have them express the feelings but rather talk about them.

Talking is good. Talking is fine but unless the old, scary, yucky feelings are EXPRESSED through emotional healing (like written down or verbalized or gotten out some constructive way) they may still be in charge of your life.

Recently, I may have lost another client. It's a shame. It saddens me that she is gone but her loss is so much greater. She has once again walked away from an opportunity to relieve herself of some of the emotional burden she has carried around for over 50 years.

What am I learning? that the work I do with people which includes teaching them how to let go of feelings really scares some of them and they may run. That's why I consider courage an important attitude to cultivate if you really want to transform your life.

I have been given gifts and knowledge to help others and myself with emotional healing.   I know the benefits of relieving myself of the emotional burden from my past and I'd lose my integrity if I just tried to come up with some surface kind of program that would not scare anybody and sell well.

Don't worry. That won't happen. It would be way too boring for me.

I love my (former?) client. I love me and I love you too much to cheat anyone.

Maia

What I'm Learning (& Why I Hate It)

For many years I've had weird symptoms which I finally learned in November is radiculopathy from spinal stenosis (Spinal stenosis is narrowing of the spinal column that causes pressure on the spinal cord, or narrowing of the openings (called neural foramina) where spinal nerves leave the spinal column.) I hurt a lot and often and big time at night.

I also teach that every situation has one or more gifts or blessings and so I pretty much have to look for those gifts and/or blessings myself.

BUT FIRST I HAVE TO COMPLAIN.

That is one of the things I am clearly seeing. I do need to be heard about how hard this is but, taking the advice from my Wise Fairy God Mother, I really try to keep it to no more than 15 minutes a day. If I go on about any longer, I chance being stuck in a negative, feeling sorry for myself place all day - and that just adds to the burden.

ANOTHER THING I'M LEARNING IS ONE PERSON, NO MATTER HOW MUCH THEY LOVE ME, CANNOT KEEP HEARING MY COMPLAINTS AND NOT BE EFFECTED.

My husband is a lovely and loving man. No one has ever cared about me the way he does. And he has been called to act on "for better or worse" a whole lot since October or November. I had reached the place where I could hardly walk and needed much care and errand running - even in our small apartment. But he is not impervious to the emotional space that I am in and he needs love and attention too. So I am going to start journaling my "stuff" first thing in the painful morning and relieve him of some of my complaining verbalizations.

I THINK I'VE ALWAYS BEEN COMPASSIONATE ABOUT OTHERS PAIN BUT NOW I REALLY UNDERSTAND THE MINUTE-BY-MINUTENESS OF IT.

Physical pain is hard to ignore. Nerve pain is hard to ignore. It has often made sitting and sleeping hard or near impossible.

My husband was telling me the this morning that because I'm a born teacher (look around the site), I will be helping people with this and that teachers who teach by example (which I am), must experience things in order to not just be spouting information but really getting to someone else's heart.

I'm sure there is more and I'm sure I'll be writing more as I journey through this new adventure in my life. And to end on a positive note, I have found treatment that I believe will work and has already shown some positive results.

Law of Attraction - My Unique Relationship to It

Does Law of Attraction Work Differently for Each of Us?

Several years after the movie "The Secret", information and writing about the Law of Attraction still abounds everywhere on the internet.The reasons for that are many and here are the ones I can think of:

• It's true. My husband, a scientist, assures me that Law of Attraction is. I've also seen What the Bleep (5 times) and read some books on quantum physics. When I'm feeling smart I understand that it is true, too.

• Everyone wants more in their life that they like. How do we know we don't like this thing or that person or a certain situation? Inside is some image we have of what we want and like. So we know if we aren't getting it.


• Everyone wants to know how to get that life and do it on purpose. Sometimes we even have bad feelings and judgments about someone just because it all looks so easy for them.


• We all want to feel like the architects of our own lives.

I've written about it before. However, I was giving myself a little talk before because I had thoughts like, "You should be on twitter. You should do a better job of SEO on your blog, blah, blah, blah." Anyway, as my clients know, I practice what I preach so I was busy reminding myself what is true for me and what has worked so well in my life:

1. I know I attract what I put my attention on. Everyone attracts what they put their attention on - Law of Attraction in a nutshell. However, we are each different. We look different, we have different genetics, etc. Obvious. But it is my opinion and observation that we each attract differently too. Some people attract what they want by going very directly after it - hence the highly successful salesperson you just love and can't really resist either. That is not me. If I tried to sell you anything, you'd probably want to run the other way. Literally, after much experience (some of it grueling) I have learned I need to wait to be asked.


2. I know if I don't get my fear and lack thoughts pretty much out of my head, I will not be attracting what I want. I will be attracting what I'm focusing on.


3. Since feelings follow thought and I sometimes just quickly feel things, I need to know how to process through those feelings and back to center (positive) as quickly as I can. But denying my feelings doesn't work. It is just me trying to trick myself. So, in other words, just positive thinking doesn't work.

Maybe he really is from another planet

Men Are from Mars.....

I know my husband since Oct. of 1982. I've been in an intimate relationship with him for 29 years and married to him for 27 and sometimes I haven't the foggiest idea who he is. He's like a beautiful being from another planet that has come into my life to give me more than I could ever have imagined. He loves me amazingly. He believes in me and my abilities - often some steps ahead of how much I can believe in myself. He is so known to me and yet - sometimes I'm almost breathless with the knowledge that how this happened - how we finally found each other is like some kind of play Directed by Someone beyond thought.

Now how does that sound coming from am a total proponent in the belief that we create our own lives? But I can't quite wrap myself around having created so amazingly while being unaware that I was doing it. How did it happen? Am I really this powerful? Is he?Does anyone else feel this way? Do I feel this way because the contrast with my former life and relationship is so great?

Signs of a Bad Relationship

You’re searching all over the internet to find out signs of a bad relationship. So that means you have the question and somewhere inside you the knowledge that your relationship sucks. Otherwise, why would you be searching. I mean we all know what a bad relationship can look like:

• You don’t agree on much.
• You each blame each other for lots of things
• You argue or you shut down. And he does the same.
• Your eye is wandering to other relationships and you are seeing theirs as way better – or at least it looks better than yours.
• You feel pretty badly about yourself.
• You’ve started to believe that NO relationship works.
• You feel abused.
• You are abused.
• You feel sad, angry - just plain unhappy.
• You want to leave.
• You’re afraid to leave.
• You think maybe you haven’t tried hard enough.
• You think maybe you’re totally codependent and can’t live on your own.
• You don’t really trust your partner anymore.
• You don’t really trust yourself anymore.
• Your friends say you should leave.
• You friends say you should stay.

These and many others are signs of a bad relationship. When a relationship is good, you feel happy, fulfilled, excited, absorbed, loved, connected. You are happy to see each other. You can’t wait. You think mostly loving and good thoughts about your partner. You feel good about yourself.

It’s not signs of a bad relationship you need to know about. It’s:

• “How can I notice the signs more quickly?”
• “How can I feel good enough about myself to brave leaving if necessary?”
• “How can I feel good enough about myself to open my mouth and say what isn’t working for me?”
• “How can I say what I feel and not get into an argument about it?”
• “How can I be heard?”
• “How can I be brave enough to know I can make it on my own, if necessary?”
• “How can I accept the inevitabilities of life without a not-working relationship as a crutch?

I can answer these questions for you by telling you some things.

• Everyone on the planet has a past.
• Everyone on the planet has parents.
• No parents, no people are perfect.
• And in our imperfection, we affect each other.

Most of us growing up somehow lost touch with the idea that we are OK, that we are deserving of happiness.  I personally believe that we come to planet earth expressly for that purpose – to learn how to love ourselves so that the inner promptings we all have – the actual biological chemistry that humans have that allow/make us feel our feelings is a kind of internal guidance system. That’s why you are reading this article. That’s why you searched on the internet for “signs of a bad relationship”. You feel lousy and you are not happy.

That’s because bad relationships feel bad. So the answer to how you can notice the signs early, have enough self-esteem to say how you feel and have a good strong bottom line of expected behavior is to heal your emotional past so that it is no longer in charge of your choice of partners and learn how to appropriately communicate with your partner – current or future – in a way that allows you to feel heard and feel good and grows the relationship rather then tearing it down.

I learned how to do just that. It took work but, boy, have the rewards been fabulous. After two failed marriages, I have been very happily remarried for 27 years – my third marriage. We communicate. It’s not always easy but no feelings are under our rug waiting to explode. Our past is largely where it should be – in the past – not in charge of our lives and our relationship. I wish “10 Tricks to a Happy Relationship” worked but I’ve never found it to be true for anybody.

Now that you're done, I have one thing left I'd like you to do.

I'd love to hear your thoughts so comment below and (uh oh this is 2) please follow this blog over there on the right. I'd love to get to know you.

What are the short term and long term effects of child abuse and whatcan the concerned do about it?

In answer to the question, “What are the short term and long term effects of child abuse and what can the concerned do about it?” I have very much to say.

Let me tell you a short story of a little girl growing up being emotionally abused  by her mother and sexually abused by her father. When she was 4 lots of things changed. Her father returned from 3 years in the Army. He left when she was 9 months old and returned when she was turning 4. He returned with a big stuffed panda and stuffed French poodle for her. Then he began to be inappropriate with her little self. And finally around the very same time, her mother started screaming at her and calling her names and scaring the wits out of her on a frequent unpredictable basis.

How do I know about this little girl? I know because she was me. The short term effects included  becoming very docile and losing touch with my creative side. I did pretty well in school because I didn’t have my mother there and she didn’t really care if I did well or not but I began to lose my creativity in writing and art.

I also became very unsure of myself in social situations. I was afraid of a lot of physical activities. I married someone who I didn’t even like because I was afraid no one would want me; my self esteem was in the basement. I developed an eating disorder. I had jobs way below my apparent capacity. Eventually I created major disease because the biochemical environment from my freaky emotions caused major distress in my body. Bottom line, my early abuse has led to lifelong issues.

I was a child in a time when people didn’t tell and certainly didn’t tell on each other. I often wondered if anyone knew what was going on only to recently reconnect with a childhood friend who told me “her parents were worried about me”. I thank them for caring but no one did anything about it.

Today there are agencies that can be contacted – even contacted anonymously so that there is more protection for kids. If you suspect or know that abuse is happening to any children you know, be brave for them because they cannot be and report it. Happily, you will have been wrong and everything is ok for them. But if there truly is something very wrong, there is a good chance the kids will get help.

If you are wondering what to do about any abuse you received as a child or even as an adult, I strongly recommend you get help from a therapist, support group or life coach knowledgeable in those areas. You can improve your life dramatically with the right help. And you are worth it!

Read these stories.

Now that you're done, I have one thing left I'd like you to do.

I'd love to hear your thoughts so comment below and (uh oh this is 2) please follow this blog over there on the right. I'd love to get to know you.

How Can You Develop Your Emotional Intelligence?

by Gina Bendel, YOU University Life Coach

Emotional Intelligence is defined as “the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions; to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions”.  ~ Defined by John D. Mayer and Peter Salovey, two leading researchers on the topic

Wikipedia defines Emotional Intelligence as a self-perceived ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself, of others, and of groups.

Developing your Emotional Intelligence (EI) will help you to navigate in your day to day interactions with the people that surround you.  To perceive EI as an inner ‘knowing’ or ‘guide’ will help you to make decisions which will honor who you are – your authentic self.

There are a myriad of ways in which you can develop your Emotional Intelligence and really begin to honor your own feelings and emotions so that your decisions reflect and create true satisfaction in your life.

• Actively seek resources on dealing with emotion.  There are many books available both online and in your local book stores or library.


• Focus on materials which help you to understand and deal with personal feelings you may be experiencing for yourself.  Some of these may be grief, anger, shame, depression, anxiety, fear, or love, happiness, and joy.


• Make it a point to learn more about issues that someone you love may be experiencing.  The idea here is to seek to understand emotions which may seem unfamiliar to you.   This is how emotional intelligence grows.


• Focus on how your own emotions influence your thoughts and actions.   Choosing to have a heightened awareness of your emotions is one key to understanding yourself and your needs.  Many people are disconnected from their own emotions.  This is especially true with strong emotion such as anger and sadness, but no amount of denial or numbing of feelings will eliminate them.  It’s important to have emotional awareness to fully understand our own needs as well as to communicate these effectively to other people.
  
  
  
  • Exercise to try:  Making it a point to focus on your feelings, begin a journal of your thoughts as they come to you, paying special attention to how you are feeling and whether the way you feel is affecting your day-to-day thoughts and actions.
  
  
  • Focus on what your body is saying to you.  Develop the ability to read how your emotion is communicating to you through your body.
    
    
    
    • Reduce stress through your senses.  Using your senses – sight, sound, smell, taste and touch, discover the things that are most soothing to you and consciously use them to reduce stress quickly.
    
    
    • Notice how your body feels when you think of a strong emotion.  Make it a point to pay attention to what your body is sharing.  For example, when you think of something that makes you angry, do you experience pain or discomfort in your body?  Starting from your feet and moving up your body – focus on how each part feels when you think of this particular emotion.

Working on your emotional intelligence helps you to stay focused in the present and recognize opportunities for resolving feelings about conflict.  It allows you to more easily pick your battles and to end conflict more readily.  You are more aware, more empathetic, more compassionate and can communicate more easily.  This is a sure way to begin to honor your real, authentic self!

Financial Abundance - Insight for Living

On this site I talk about blocks to personal/spiritual growth and uncovering them so we are able to have an insight for living. Well, I’ve discovered a big core block for myself. Here’s how the discovery of it went:

In the coaching group I’m leading, at the end of the call when it was her turn to share what she got out of the call, one of the members said that she see’s the little girl in each of us (5 women including me).

Then I said, “You want to know what kind of little girl I was? I loved skirts that twirl. I put on shows in the neighborhood organizing the kids a little younger then I. We made and sold tickets. My mother hung an old bedspread on the clothesline and we put on some kind of show. I don’t remember the show but I do remember that I told fortunes from an upside down fishbowl.

I organized several of these shows  between the ages of 5 and 6. I  stopped when I started school. But no matter what I said, my mother would not let me keep the money. I had to give it to charity.

So now I find a place inside me where I made up that I’m not supposed to make money from what I love to do and what I’m good at. So I’ve been a coach for years. I’ve been on the internet for years. And I’m still working on money as a block!

Well, there it is. Probably my main block to financial abundance.

What will I do now? I guess I’ll do some work around my mother and keep watching for those thoughts. Keep an insight for living. BTW, my mother wasn’t even trying to teach me about charity, she didn't want the neighbors to think we didn’t have enough money  (which we didn’t.)

I am confident that my block to abundance is leaving as I write.

Now that you're done, I have one thing left I'd like you to do.

I'd love to hear your thoughts so comment below and (uh oh this is 2) please follow this blog over there on the right. I'd love to get to know you.

Communicating the Small Stuff

Relationship Communication

Bafflement

OK. I teach and coach about relationships. Everybody knows that communication is one of the pillars of a healthy relationship. In relationship communication I have learned to communicate the big stuff - like: "You are acting like a jerk" or "when you don't talk to me, I feel scared about our relationship and don't know what's going on," etc.

But how do I let you know things like, "You have dandruff "or "you dripped on the bathroom floor or messed up the sheets?" Those things are so personal and seem so hard to communicate and so petty to boot. I just want to let them go. But then I end up resentful. You know, little thing on top of little thing on top of clean up after you and say nothing, on top of little thing and I'm ready to walk right out the door.

I've been in a great relationship for 29 years and I still haven't learned the best way to do it.

Any ideas on relationship communication?

Exercise - Taking Care of My Aging Body

Exercise!

Well, when your reputation is staked on being able to find the good and learning from everything, you can't just start becoming a victim of either your aging body or any beliefs about what aging means. So my adventure here on Planet Earth at age 70 is like this and this is what I'm learning:

An aging body will sure teach you to take care of your body. The results of not doing it can be felt almost immediately. I pretty much got through my life doing a very minimum of exercise still looking OK and being able to move rather automatically.

Can't get away with that any more. It doesn't matter whether I have issues and want to take my time getting over this, it will not cooperate. If I don't exercise frequently - like daily - I feel not great in my body and my balance and strength dwindles perceptibly even though I eat very, very healthy and have done so for years.

OK. I WILL LOVE MYSELF ENOUGH TO TAKE COMPLETE CARE OF MY BODY. NO EXCUSES!

This Is Exactly Why I Chose Not To Get A Life Coach Certification

Life Coach Certification Or NOT

I'm involved in a life coaching forum and was perusing the entries one day and found an online conversation fraught with frustrations and stress. The stress and frustration had to do with a coach's inability to share their  wisdom, knowledge and experience with the client. They had their own life coach certification. One of the posts was something like this,

" … unfortunately, as (a certain brand) coach we are not supposed to impart our wisdom. We are supposed to draw it out of client. I bite my tongue because I want to share some of what has been talked about here, but I am in life coach certification right now and my supervisor reminds me that I am supposed to be wisdomless and bring it out of the client because they are naturally creative, resourceful and whole."

This is exactly why I haven't gone through a formal life coach certification program.

I believe my clients are naturally creative, resourceful and whole also. They're wise enough to seek support when they are going through challenges, change and transition. It seems to me it is almost unkind and callous to withhold these thoughts from a client.

So as a result, my style of coaching includes mentoring in addition to coaching (asking powerful questions) which means besides helping the client plumb the depths of their own intuition, knowledge, inner guidance and wisdom, I often advise, counsel, guide and/or teach.

I continuously remind the client that they will know and that I am not them nor in them so I could be completely wrong but I have found that they come to rely and respect what I offer them since I too have often walked in their shoes and continue to walk my own path of transformation daily.

Having lived 70 years and consciously pursued a personal and spiritual growth path and being an acute observer of the human condition – mine and others – I feel it is my responsibility and joy to share that with those who ask. The counsel that I give can not be found through life coach certification but through life itself.

Now that you're done, I have one thing left I'd like you to do.

I'd love to hear your thoughts so comment below and (uh oh this is 2) please follow this blog over there on the right. I'd love to get to know you.

A Life Coach Attempts the Definition of Psychology

Study of Soul or Mind?

FreeDictionary.com defines psychology as "the science that deals with mental processes and behaviors." The actual definition as derived from the Latin terms that make up the word mean "the study of the soul or mind".

I believe the term psychology has changed over the years and has often become very different from the study of the soul or the mind.

Life coaching is not very different from psychology in that psychology focuses on the self and making changes within yourself and life coaching helps you make changes in your life situations to make your self happier and more fulfilled. Many life coaches also focus on inner change to bring about outer change - including me.

There need be no competition between someone in psychology and someone in life coaching. Often the two work hand in hand to assist people with finding what they truly want in life and a means to get it. It seems to me also that we are all drawn to different ways of growth - none being better or worse. Just different.

Now that you're done, I have one thing left I'd like you to do.

I'd love to hear your thoughts so comment below and (uh oh this is 2) please follow this blog over there on the right. I'd love to get to know you.

The only One Who Knows It All is not making house calls today.

Accepting Life on Life's Terms - or Not

I go to meetings in rooms where one of the watchword phrases is about "accepting life on life's terms". Sounds good and very spiritual - and often it is but sometimes it's not.

Nineteen years ago I was told that I had early stages of breast cancer. I was unwilling to accept what was and is commonly used for treatment - chemotherapy and radiation. When I look back I see it was a bold step since that is what "everyone" did and what all the doctors recommended and on top of that, it is what my mother died of at age 57. I was 51 and chose a different way. I chose a metabolic diet, supplements and detoxification. I am well and have none of the aftereffects of the harsh treatments prescribed regularly.

Well, last week I was told I have spinal stenosis which is a narrowing of the spinal column caused by osteoarthritis whose emotional component stems from abuse in childhood. The prognosis could well be bladder and bowel malfunction and a wheelchair.

It certainly sent me into a tizzy. I have weird leg pain and other sensations, knee stuff, a foot that goes to sleep, sore hips and I'm 70. Should I just accept life on life's terms? If I did that the way others do, I'd be at doctors' offices, getting MRI's, etc. Well, that is not my way.

So I'm doing acupuncture and have researched what my diet and supplements should look like, going to learn tai chi and if that doesn't work I shall continue accepting life on my terms until the day I die and have accept death on its terms.

I really want one person that I could find that knows it all but that person doesn't exist - no matter how extensive their education. They know what they know and it is up to me to cull out the best of it, the parts that make sense to me both intellectually and intuitively. The only One Who Knows It All is not making house calls today.

Being Mindful of Wednesdays

Allow your natural rhythms. Honor the seasons of nature and the rhythms of your life.

Being present to the life that presses upon us does not mean simply being alert and full of consciousness. Surrendering to a daydream or a memory may be a way of being engaged with the present. Drifting into reverie might bring us to the full immediacy of the moment, which may be properly focused on invisible things. Turned inward, we might be completely present , and conversely, being wide awake to life might be a distraction and, to the soul, a kind of sleep.    Thomas Moore

What he's talking about is a creative process – even the creative stuff you don’t like.  You might be in a relationship that doesn’t work and you are at the point where it seems that nothing can change. You might feel powerless to change or you can’t stand it any more and can’t see a way out.

These are the Wednesdays of life.

It’s flat; it’s up against a wall.  But it is part of the creative process of life.

It seemed like that in my first marriage. It also seemed like that while writing a book for the first time.

There are many ways to look at these Wednesdays of life—from the perspective of trying to get to the weekend—which is where I really come alive, have fun, relax.

Endure the week for the big payoff—From that perspective Wednesdays energy is that of impasse, de-energized, depression, static, inertia, stuck, blocks and up against the wall.

I’ve discovered that the creative processes of life itself are full of Wednesdays and that the weekend could be a metaphor for the big payoff—the book, the project, the life passage, etc.

From this perspective Wednesdays have become a synonym for “just before the breakthrough”—

It’s often that after a flurry of creative process', lots of creative juice and productivity a period of malaise, discontent and sometimes even apparent chaos precedes breakthrough. THIS IS GOOD!

It typically comes about midway in a project - hence the name - Wednesday.

Now that you're done, I have one thing left I'd like you to do.

I'd love to hear your thoughts so comment below and (uh oh this is 2) please follow this blog over there on the right. I'd love to get to know you.

What's the real scoop about Thanksgiving being about an attitude of gratitude?

I have a suspicion that Thanksgiving which has the obvious celebration of gratitude - the Pilgrims gratitude to the Native Americans for their help in surviving in this harsh land - has - I truly believe - a deeper, more spiritual mean and reason for being.

I've noticed over the years the apparent spiritual brilliance sneaking through things like the Constitution. Were the Founding Fathers so smart or were they inspired to create a country that has achieved so much enlightened behavior. Certainly we have had our times of great adversity - to whit the last 8 years - but I feel that too is all in the plan. It does seem to be we humans grow - adversity causes jumps in consciousness both individually and group consciously also.

So, Thanksgiving. Imagine a holiday that celebrates gratitude. What other purpose could it have? Could it be how the "spirits" let us know that gratitude is important. Gratitude is so important it is likely the next to healthiest emotion we can have. Pure love is the healthiest but gratitude takes a very close second because proper use of it uncovers the love that's always there. It has the ability to plug you in to the love you forgot momentarily. And why do we want to have those feelings so much besides the fact that they feel so good?

Because that is how we create ourselves to be positive attractors. How make use of Law of Attraction on purpose - not by default. Law of Attraction works whether we know it, like it, work with it - or not. It is a Universal Law like gravity. If you consciously create a certain emotional vibration, you can consciously attract into your life experience and material stuff that match it. Like attracts like.

So I'm thinking that Thanksgiving is a reminder each year to get back on track with gratitude if you want to create the life of your dreams.