How to Be Happy with Yourself – That Is the Question

Oh, my mother would have loved to tell me how to be happy with myself.

• She’d tell me to make sure I looked good whenever I go out because you never know who you’re going to meet. What she meant by that was that maybe I’d meet the right guy that would come and take care of me the rest of my life.
  
  
  
  • Well, right away this was a problem for me since I thought I was fundamentally defective and couldn’t look good.
  
  
  • She’d tell me go to the right college (so I’d find that same right guy that I might meet when I went out looking good). I did just that. I went to Rutgers University and graduated in 3 ½ years. And I even met a guy. Today I’d call him the “right guy” because married to him I learned that how I looked or what college I graduated or choosing a guy just because he looked good enough would never make me happy. That big long 19 year relationship lesson taught me that being happy with myself is an inside job.

So if the guy’s not the answer and how I look isn’t the answer and going to a top college isn’t the answer, how can I be happy with myself?

Stop for a moment and go look in the mirror. What do you see? Is all you see only what’s wrong with you?

Or if I told you to go write a list of your accomplishments would you have a little voice piping up and letting you know that those things are no big deal? Does it say you didn’t do such a great job or that someone else did better?

Or do you know your accomplishments and like how you look in the mirror and STILL aren’t happy with yourself?

If you said yes to any of the above, you are living with some level of damaged self-esteem. Babies don’t have damaged self-esteem. They are quite pleased with themselves. You were a baby and when you were, you were quite pleased with yourself. So what happened? Why are you not happy with yourself now?

Because I grew up in a family that ended up making me feel quite lousy about and with myself and the feelings got more than I could stand, I’ve made a study of how to feel happy with myself for over 40 years. And it’s worked. I feel quite happy with myself.

So how did I do it? Or more importantly, how can you do it? How can you learn to feel happy with yourself?

I’ve discovered that the method is like a 3-legged stool. If you only have 2 of the legs, the stool will topple. If you don’t deal with all three of the areas I’m going to talk about, you probably won’t learn to feel good about yourself i.e. the stool won’t work.

Let’s talk about BELIEF as the first leg of the stool. You have some mistaken beliefs about yourself that you picked up somewhere between that baby who was happy with herself and the adult who’s reading this because you don’t feel happy with yourself. Now you may try or have tried some of the tricky things you find in self-help books or online sites and you still really can’t seem to change your inner belief that you’re somehow not ok.

The second leg of the stool is HEALING. This is the one that most people neglect. We all have a past. Something or some things happened between the happy-with-self baby you were and the unhappy-with-self adult you’ve become. If you are willing to heal your past, then you will be able to change your beliefs about yourself. Your past is holding you to those erroneous beliefs as if you had invisible leg irons keeping your there. If healing the past sounds like something you resonate with, take a look at how this emotion-based program, might help.

Now once you heal the past and can begin to see the falseness of your negative beliefs about yourself and a very interesting thing occurs. You learn how to take INSPIRED ACTION – the third leg of the stool. In other words, you trust your gut, your intuition, your hunches on how to proceed in your life and soon enough because you are connecting to your own inner wisdom, you discover you are quite happy with yourself.

This is not an overnight process but it doesn’t take too long either. In a matter of a few months, you can be on your merry and happy way with tools to take you through a fabulous and very happy rest of your life.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

Are the "noes" of childhood in charge of your life? How can you beemotionally healthy?

Remember when you were a kid and you wanted some things that your parents said NO to? I'm guessing it would not have been OK for you to express anger at your disappointment. Most parents are not so OK with that but where did those feelings go? They most likely never got expressed which means they are somewhere "in" you which means most likely they need some work - some healing.

In my work as an Emotion-Based Coach, I meet both women who've had horrendous backgrounds and women whose childhood was pretty good. It's the one whose childhood was pretty good who have the most difficulty in believing that their past might be the reason their relationships don't work out or they can't seem to do the work that makes them happy or anything else that isn't working in their lives.

Here's an example from a conversation I had this week with a really quite healthy woman who is considering going through YOU University with me as her coach. When she was a kid, her dad wanted her to become a golf pro and apparently put a fair amount of pressure on her to do so. She did not become a golf pro and knows intellectually that her dad wanted the best for her but I believe that the kid in her still needs to express her feelings around being pushed into something she didn't really want to do and the somewhat powerless experience that kids often have even with the best of parents.

We all have situations like the one above in our past. Some of us, unfortunately, have much harsher ones but usually, those women hurt so much, that they try to get relief by going to therapy or being involved in spiritual and/or personal growth programs and reading self-help blogs, books and ebooks. It's the ones with the easier past who have a hard time believing that their "great" childhood could leave any negative impact on them.

It occurs to me that taking this self-assessment might help you get some insight into yourself and how the now is linked with the past.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

What to Do if You Were Taught Not to Take Care of Yourself

Selfish or Self-Care?

It seems when I was a child I was never taught about self-care or to want things. Whenever I wanted something, I was accused of being selfish.  It didn't matter if I was tired or just not wanting to do chores. I heard it so much and so often and didn't want to think I was anything bad like that, I stopped taking care of myself in many different ways. If taking care of me was selfish, than taking care of and pleasing others was unselfish . And I'd much rather be unselfish. I suspect many people and maybe more women are taught this self-defeating, unloving attitude by other women - mostly their mothers who had learned the same thing in their early lives.

If you experienced something like that dynamic somewhere in your past, you might find it difficult to rest enough, difficult to eat well, difficult to take care of your body in other ways. You might find it difficult to take care of yourself in relationships. You might judge your emotions as unworthy of a good (unselfish) person. You might also find it difficult to have healthy boundaries and difficult to stand up for what you know is right.

How do I know all of this? I know it because I have lived it in one way or another. So what do you do if you see yourself in these words?

• Start paying attention to how you treat yourself. Take a little notebook and write down the ways you see you not taking good physical care of yourself. Then get support to change those old habits. Find someone or someones who will help you understand that you are infected with wrong thinking. Funny. My mother also said, "God helps those who help themselves." I'll buy that one. So I help myself.
  

• Start paying attention to how others treat you. Are you taken advantage of in relationships? Are you expected to give more than your partner? Are you underpaid? Do you do work that is unsatisfying? Talk to someone who loves you enough to be an honest mirror and listen to what they are saying. It is most likely the truth and you most likely know it is deep down inside yourself.

Find support to learn to love yourself from the inside out.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

What Does "Owning Your Power" Mean?

Introducing, (your name goes here) the great!

How Do I "Own My Power"?

Our neuroses are the raw material out of which an interesting personality may be crafted.
Original Self, Thomas Moore 2000, Harper Collins, p. 15

 

I've been a study in holding myself back. These are some of the ways I've done it:

• I’ve given certain people too much power. I think they know or can do more or better than I can. Thinking that I have tried to almost BE them. Guess what? You can't be anyone but yourself.

• I’ve protected someone close to me from the judgment of others. For example, I never wanted my mother to know when I was hurt or angry with my ex-husband. I guess I didn’t want to let her think she was right. She didn’t like how he treated me (and I didn’t like how he or she treated me). The funny thing about this is that SHE was the one who he reminded me of and who changed a happy sensitive little girl into a person who would totally ignore her own knowledge that this man was never going to be a good partner for me.

• I’ve said I was going to do something – and then didn’t follow through like the zillions of times I said I was going to lose weight – and didn’t. How loving is that to me?

How have you held yourself back? Are your boundaries being stepped on? Do you keep your word – especially to yourself?

Here’s an assignment to help you get your power back. Every day ask someone what they value in you. The more stuck or depressed you are feeling the more important it is to ask this question. The more you don't want to do it, the more you need to.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

Letting Go - Teaching How to Forgive

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

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

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

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

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

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

You University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

What is the definition of emotional intelligence and how can you develop yours?

From a website dedicated “to communicating scientific information about emotional intelligence” I found these definitions:

Emotional intelligence represents an ability to validly reason with emotions and to use emotions to enhance thought.

They also say: a more formal definition is...the capacity to reason about emotions, and of emotions to enhance thinking. It includes the abilities to accurately perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth.

So now we have a formal definition which I might translate this way: emotional intelligence allows you to know what you are feeling, understand others' feelings and to be able to use those feelings to promote your own emotional and personal development.  

That doesn’t sound too hard, does it? Well, actually for most people it is quite difficult. It is only easy for us when we are babies because emotional intelligence is a natural part of being a human being. And just as intelligence (called by us IQ) is a measure of our intelligence capacity so too is EQ a measure of our emotional capacity.

While intelligence can be affected by a person’s environment, even more so a person’s EQ can be affected by a person’s environment. To make that perfectly clear: if as children you were not allowed or supported in continuing to express your emotions as a baby so easily does, it is as if a little plug was put in some part of your emotional expression ability. For example, you are two years old and you want to play with the water in the toilet. Mommy says “no” and picks you up and moves you away – probably closing the door of the bathroom so you cannot get back to the water. You are pissed off. But Mommy does not have time for you to have your way right now. She distracts you or is not happy with you in some way. Most likely she does not encourage your anger but likely tries to get you to be a “good little girl”.

This simple example shows you how this happens. Children often are forced to not feel or not show they feel what they actually do feel – particularly if it is anger, hurt or sadness. So those old emotions get stuck and begin to be much of the driving factor in how you live your life. They create your unconscious beliefs about yourself and your world.

The way to develop your emotional intelligence is to work with someone who can:

• Offer you tools to rid yourself of the old stuck emotions.
• Help you bring the false beliefs about yourself and the world to light.
• Provide you with tools to keep your emotional and personal growth growing for the rest of your life.

I have been working on just this very thing myself for about 30 years and from someone who didn’t even know I had stuffed a lot of unexpressed anger and who most of the time didn’t know what I was feeling and felt often very disconnected to myself, I am now considered an emotional intelligence expert. It takes work but the results are amazing.

Oftentimes people are very afraid of this kind of work because they believe they might be overwhelmed and not be able to handle the emotions that come up. However, if you find the correct help, you will discover that that isn’t the way it works at all. Somehow our own healthy desire keeps the old stuff coming up at a rate that you will be quite able to handle.

You University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

WHY HURT? - Expressing Emotional Pain

Expressing Your Emotional Pain

Are you afraid of your feelings?

You could have looked at this subtitle and thought one of two things:  "What's the big deal? We all know how to deal with our feelings" or "Yes. I think my feelings are too big or too many or too scary". For those with the second comment: sometimes when we find a challenge, like in addressing our emotional pain, their are benefits. Only, if we look.

I don't know what it's like in other states on other freeways but you've probably heard we have lots of traffic here in L.A.

Well, I'm scared of driving on the freeway and so  I usually don't unless someone else is driving. A couple of weeks ago my husband was driving in pretty heavy weekend traffic going south on the 405. Sometimes when we drive we chat about this and that (in between grousing about the traffic and drivers). This day we were chatting about how lucky we are to have been trained how to deal with our feelings and emotional pain when along comes a license plate saying WHY HURT.

WHY HURT  can mean more than one thing. It can mean:

• First- "You don't have to hurt" and I agree with that. We can make a choice. Unfortunately, many think they can't, but still, WHY HURT?
• Second (this is the reason it struck me so) - A reason to feel  hurt (if you are really in touch with your feelings and know how to let them flow as they were meant to) could mean you are on your way to healing your emotional pain. HURT is milder than ANGER, on it's way to having one know their FEARs and a bit closer to LOVE and FORGIVENESS.

So I ask you: "Why hurt?" you are so close to being in a place of love and forgiveness. Why not learn and move on and become that much closer with yourself?   In the pursuit of not feeling our feelings, at the very least we become disconnected from ourselves and have problems relating to others deeply and well.

Why hurt?

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

The Scariest Word in the English Language: CHANGE!

Benefits of Working with a Life Coach

Although dealing with change in our lives is not easy, it is necessary and there is no getting around it.  Your life will change all the time in hundreds of different ways and the only thing that you can control is how you handle the changes.

If you are not happy with your life, get over your fears, your past, your self-doubt and CHANGE IT.  The key is to sit down and figure out what exactly it is that you do want and what actions you need to take to change it.  For most of us having that conversation alone in your head doesn't seem to work out very well. It's usually helpful and even necessary to have the help of a good friend or a life coach so that you will be honest and thorough with yourself.

Remember, what you think you want now will probably change many times throughout the course of your life. But all this change will help you find out how to deal with change.

Dealing with change begins with acceptance of the current situation. Work with a life coach or a therapist if you can't reach acceptance yourself. Since life brings constant change, the inner resources to deal with change need to be developed.

Daily start to look for what you have to be grateful for in your life instead of focusing on your struggle and negative mind chatter. The basis of an inability to deal with change is fear. Try to "be with" the situation and the feelings. Stop resisting. You know the old saw: What you resist, persists.

Know that the changes you are going through you have created in your life with the way you think and change your thinking to match your goals and soon change becomes fun and easy as the changes with which you are succeeding and following through on, will help you accomplish your goals. The Law of Attraction says "like attracts like". Prolonged focus on negative thoughts and feelings will attract more negative change into your life. It's time to turn 180^o and pursue the exciting adventure that is your life.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Attract Abundance in "This Economy"!

How Can I Attract Abundance?

STOP WATCHING THE NEWS!

Every news media one reads or sees these days is predicting economic horrors or reporting on the current ones.  This cannot help you to attract abundance into your life.  Since I've been alive the past 70 years, I have lived though many different economies. What I've noticed is that just like people - they change and the change is constant.

My husband is a pretty smart guy and has a talent and gift for seeing the big picture. He says, after trying to scope it all out, that the economy is all in our minds. And I say, "We have control over those." Am I not noticing the facts? It is group consciousness that created the world economy such as it is and it is group consciousness that will create something different - one mind at a time.

Remember in the movie What the Bleep Do We Know? how we saw how we are biochemically addicted or our emotional states? (If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.) The media knows this and is selling us the fear that is addictive. Because it is addictive it keeps us coming back for more and more and more. Ultimately, as we buy into the fear that they are selling and we are addicted to, our negative vibrations then create what we have - a big, negative mess.

How can we change it?

Taking responsibility for our own minds. To attract abundance we must filter what goes into our mind and feelings. The Law of Attraction works. It works in our individual lives and it works in our group conscious mind even bigger. The more we focus, the more we will get.

So my question to you is, WHERE IS YOUR MIND FOCUSED TODAY? Have you learned how to deal with and process through your negative feelings and emotions and keep finding a way to truly be positive? Not just the words, but the actual feelings.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Fears - Barriers to Personal Growth

Fears in Control?

Allowing fears to stop you from accomplishing what you want in life might be one of the most significant barriers to personal growth.

• Say you want to stop spending your life working for others, doing a job that is largely uncreative and unsatisfying to your soul. But you know how much money is coming in every month.

• What if you don't know what you do want to do or you know but have never been in your own business and don't know how to start or all your old messages of incompetence arise? Hire a coach.

The right life coach is in their own business so they certainly can teach and support you to do the same.

The life coach will help you deal with your negative self talk.

Many people have various different fears and no matter what they are about, they can be so strong that they are completely debilitating. Many life coaches will help you with tools and techniques to overcome your fear so you can follow a clear path towards your future.

A coach will give you tools and techniques to help you over come your barriers to personal growth, of course, but the most important thing that they can give you is the confidence in yourself to know that whatever your fear is, you can handle it. Sooner or later, as you progress with your coach you will suddenly feel so strongly that you can face that fear and do whatever it is you are so scared of,  you will just jump right in and do it.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Once Upon a Time There Was Emotional Healing

Three Magic Secrets  to Emotional Healing

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

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

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

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

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

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

Three Magic Secrets - the Movie

The First 37 Years - Covered in the Movie

I guess I've learned to make a story out of my life. This movie is the story of a part of my life. Making it into a story, has helped me learn what was good about the hard parts. Writing and producing it the way I did felt like giving birth to my 5th child. That child has taught me many things about life and myself. It is said, "from the mouth of babes".

The Fifth Child Is Born as We All Are - as a Result of Pain

Twelve years ago my husband and I found ourselves living in Las Vegas, a very unlikely place for someone who hates heat and always said she never would want to live there - me. Some people experience the results in their lives that have people saying to them, "Be careful what you wish for" but I seem to have to stay away from "I never..." kinds of statements because then they seem to happen.

So we had just gone through one of the hard parts in life. For 5 years we ran a workshop training company for John Gray, the Men Are from Mars guy and that company ended abruptly and kind of crazily. Many things changed in our lives including no longer being able to afford our lovely home in N. California. Fortunately, my husband was offered the job in Las Vegas and to Las Vegas we went.

So since I had to do something in Las Vegas out of the heat, I decided to see if I could write a book. It was a sometimes frustrating journey but I did it! I learned that I have creative talent that I had no idea I had.

The Fifth Child's Frustrating Years

I also had no idea how to market the book, so it sat in boxes in our house until along came the idea of making it into a Powerpoint presentation with movement and music.

That also took many, many months only to find out that Powerpoint files were really hard to show on the internet. Eventually I had it made into a flash movie which took a whole year long journey in itself and was fraught with much drama between me and the gentleman who was making it for me.

Meanwhile things got way better in our lives. We were back in Los Angeles, crazed and then uncrazed over the loss of all of our money but life kept improving as my husband found his fifth career at age 70, teaching high school Physics which he does until today, seven years later, and I am about to start training my thirteenth coach.

The Fifth Child Grows Up

Yesterday I was able to convert that flash movie that took a year to be done into a movie I can easily post anywhere from youtube to facebook or right here on my website. For that I am exceptionally grateful. At the same time in this my 70th year on the planet (I will have my 70th birthday on January 4, 2013) I am now known as the Wise Fairy God Mother and I finally believe it is the most appropriate title for this formerly very low self esteem woman, the Woman-Who-Was-the-Girl-Who-Was-the-Light. And I am grateful.

Note: If you want to find out who the Woman-Who-Was-the-Girl-Who-Was-the-Light and the Wise Fairy God Mother are, watch the movie. It's up there on the menu bar. It'll take you about 11 minutes and put your speakers on.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching  

The Biggest Reason Relationships Fail

I didn’t speak up but I was totally aware how I felt about him but right along with knowing that, were the many fears about how I look to the world with the star one being “nobody will want me”.

What I mean by “not telling the truth” is not telling the truth about my emotions and how I was feeling about him and in the relationship. Sometimes I’m just in denial about something but this I knew absolutely. If I was in denial about anything, it was that I was an attractive and acceptable woman.

There is the “sports, news and weather” kind of communication about jobs, kids, friends, family, colds, the news, etc. That is not what we are talking about here. What we are talking about here is the communication that happens between people in a relationship that starts out as “being in love” and can deteriorate into wanting to end the relationship or living in what feels like an armed camp or a monastery with no communication."

So the question might be, “If I’m feeling angry, should I just express it?” The answer is “yes” and “no”. If you just express it, it will only be part of what is true and will cause an argument or a shutdown in communication. If you don’t express it, you might end up with years of unexpressed emotion piling up and creating separation. The tool I will teach you will help you in both ways - to fully communicate and also prevent lack of connection.

I was taught, while on my journey of learning, how to have a relationship, to “tell the truth quickly”. I took that on as a if I were enrolled in a lifesaving course of study - which it has proven to be.

Anger covers over love with lots of different feelings in between. Anger is sort of the first emotion so that even if I feel afraid or sad in a situation, it is really because I am angry.

Did you ever watch a baby get angry over not getting what they want? As soon as they get it, they are all smiles again. They do it quickly and easily. We, however, have been socialized away from that. If I am 5 and want the red dress and get angry because I don’t get it, most parents and teachers tell us that “it isn’t nice” or “don’t do that” or “it is not ok to get angry at adults” or ...whatever you were told. And so being the smart little beings that we are and wanting to please our adults, we begin the comply and create habits of a lifetime.

This is the biggest reason why relationships fail.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

Emotions and Feelings - Letting Go of Hurt Feelings

Letting Go of Hurt Feelings

I am a true believer of expressing emotions and feelings. I believe the only way out of emotions is through them. If your feelings have been hurt, pushing it down won't work. If your feelings have been hurt, dumping feelings on the person who hurt them won't work either. What works is letting go - appropriately. But how does one do that? In my YOU University program and other programs, I give you instructions to write Love Letters. Love Letters were designed to be used as a tool for appropriate expression of emotions and feelings.

John Gray and Barbara deAngelis taught me how to write Love Letters in 1982. I've been writing them ever since. I can do them in my sleep or in my head if I don't have a computer or a piece of paper handy. I am an expert. I teach them. I coach them. I probably even nag about them. Love Letter used correctly are a great way of letting go.

I was talking to one of my coaches this morning and I shared with her two little stories about what happens when someone isn't open to your feelings and she suggested I share them with you all. Here they are:

Story #1 - I have a very good friend for 30 years. She has been totally instrumental in my life. She sent me to the first workshop where I learned about emotions and feelings and learned to write Love Letters. (I also happened to meet my lovely husband there but that's another story.) She is also very unafraid of her own anger and can be very strong is expressing it. Growing up with the mother I had and just being myself, I'm not wild about being around that so when I was upset with her many years ago, I wrote her a Love Letter. She didn't want to write one but assured me she could just do it verbally.

Well, it didn't work out so well. I read mine to her - ending with lots of love and forgiveness that was truly in my heart. Then it was her turn. Because she's so forceful in her anger and it is so easy for her to express, it about knocked me over. Because she wouldn't write the letter, she was unable to gauge whether the love she expressed was at least as long or longer then the anger she expressed (one of the vital rules involved in Love Letters).

My questions to you: How does it feel to you when a whole load of anger is dumped on you with no resolution of forgiveness and love and understanding.

Story #2 - In my past I worked for years in a couple of personal growth organizations. Love Letters were used in the culture of the community surrounding the group but the leaders refused to receive them even though they taught them. I strongly requested that I be allowed to use one to communicate my upset. I was given the OK verbally but the person to whom I read the letter had their heart completely closed to what I said - even all the love. If I had know then what I know now, I would have stopped as soon as I realized this. But I did not. I kept going. It felt as if all of the feelings multiplied by 10 bounced back off that closed heart and fell all over me. It was very painful.

My question to you: If it is so painful to not be heard and understood, what is stopping you from finding a way to do it so that you are heard and understood or at least feel peace within yourself?

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Gosh! I hate to cry! It messes up my makeup....

How Not to Cry

This morning I viewed a wonderful little video created by my friend, Dr. Jane Bolton, a therapist friend of mine.The story goes like this: we're little. We cry. The adults don't want to hear it for whatever their reasons. They tell us big girls don't cry or you cry too much or you have it so good you have no reason to cry. Whatever. So we learn that crying is bad or embarrassing or immature or something not OK.

But did you ever think that crying has a purpose?

Well, it does. It is a wonderful release. I believe it is a necessary release of emotion and it cleanses away many difficult feelings. For me, I believe it saved my life. I cried very easily as a child with lots of reasons that were valid. No child likes being yelled at and criticized on a very constant basis. It was a big release for me who was not allowed much of any other feeling except happiness. For 37 years I lived with someone - first mother then husband - who made me feel bad and fearful. And so I cried. Within two months of having finally left that husband in 1980, every one of my 4 children who were then 6, 7, 10 and 14 at the time noticed that, "You no longer cry everyday, Mommy." That's because my predominant feeling at the time was gratitude for no longer living in fear and unhappiness.

The upshot of these experiences is that I know that crying is like releasing a safety valve and that we were made as humans to experience all of it - anger, fear, hurt, sadness, happiness, joy. And crying is a great way to release those feelings that don't feel good and even a way often to express joy.

I've never really written about my thoughts on crying and how sad I feel when I hear people apologizing for crying. Your tears are a gift to whomsoever gets to hear you - and hopefully give you a hug.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

The Beginning of Taking Responsibility

I've been dealing with food addiction for over 40 years. It used to be  so tied in with my low self esteem and poor self image that it could only allow me to look some version of me being perfect to  even be OK. When that was true, all I wanted to do was think I looked OK and then everything would be fine. And since I never could really look OK, the distraction of the addiction served my crazy purpose - to feel badly about myself.

Now I have quite good self esteem and self image. My self questioning and self judgment about how I look or what I think and do is very rare. That is not to say I think everything I do is perfect. It is to say that everything I do is just OK with me. I trust that I have a lot to offer and I trust that I will not always do what is popular or what works. So what? Before, all I needed to do was be perfect. Now all I need to do is be myself.

I've been maintaining around a 40-50 pound weight loss for several years. I got rid of all clothes that I can trick myself into thinking I haven't gain with; the slightly bigger ones that would then allow weight gain to surprise me. That was an old subconscious trick of mine. Now my clothes keep fitting and I'm bored with them. Isn't that lovely?

Now all my clothes fit; my scale is correct and now I have to self coach. I have to self talk. I have to provide the support for myself that I provide my clients; the support that ultimately they will have to offer themselves. I have to find the part of me that loves myself enough to get over it - whatever it might be in the moment.

I'm like the man in Beautiful Mind who just decided that he would live with the delusions that his mental illness gave him and not medicate himself with the less-than-satisfactory drugs he was prescribed. I accept that sometimes this food addiction will walk along with me. I just need to acknowledge it, not resist it, and act in my best interests - not its. Ultimately we all coach ourselves - even the life coaches.

You University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

Are you in a love hate relationship?

I’ve been thinking about what a love hate relationship is. The operative word to me is “love”. If one is calling it “love hate”, it must mean there is first love. So where does that take you? Well, if this love hate relationship is someone with who you are having romantic relationship or marriage with, you’ll want to be investigating, understanding and dealing with where the hate is coming from. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

1)      Am I carrying resentment because of behavior in the relationship that has gone unaddressed?

2)      Do I feel I hate the person I also love because we have issues and they aren’t being dealt with?

3)      Is this relationship about failed expectations?

4)      Am I always in a love hate relationship? (Is it because I like the drama?)

5)      Is this relationship very similar to my parents relationship or my relationship to either of my parents?

There are serious issues underlying the questions above. The first three questions have to do with communication in the relationship. If one is to have a healthy long term relationship that succeeds, communication needs to happen. Yelling is not the kind of communication I mean. I am talking about expressing appropriately the feelings and emotions that occur when one is in close connection with another person. Feelings get hurt. Mistakes happen. Misunderstanding happens. Bad days happen. Big and small events happen. Other people and situations impact what is happening between the two of you. If children are involved, everything is multiplied. And all problems have a solution but if the reason you call it a love hate relationship in the first place is because communication is poor, it is likely it will eventually end up becoming a totally hate relationship and end.

If your answer to question 4 is yes, I’m betting the answer to number 5 is yes also. If this is the case, it might not be enough to just express emotions appropriately within the relationship, it might mean you will have to deal with your relationships with your parents before you can turn your love hate relationship into one you’d call a love relationship, there’s a lot of healing work that needs to be done. With large and unresolved issues from the past, it is most likely that every relationship you ever have will continue to create problems until you realize that you are worthy of a love relationship and do not need to settle for love hate.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

Inner Child Healing and Finding Your Creativity

Inner Child Healing

Perfectionism started for me as a child. My mother wanted me to be perfect and I bought into it totally. I don't feel like a victim here because the way I imagine it, that the choice was made during some period when I was out of a body and just an energy - a soul - and decided that a good part of my path in this life would be to always try to be perfect. I often fall very short. Many years ago I started working on my inner child healing and realized at age 66 that perfection is a mental box. It keeps creativity from entering.

Let's look at an example. Let's say I want perfect grooming. I try to figure out how to have my hair look perfect. I try to figure out how my nails should look to be considered perfect. I spend lots of effort figuring out how to dress, moisturize, deodorize and criticize myself into perfection. Does it work? Can I ever truly be perfect? Of course not! The more I try to be perfect the more I cut myself off from my inner child healing and know my true self.  It is not worth severing that connection with myself to fit into someone's fashion box.

Let's look at another example. Let's say I want the perfect career but I don't know who I am or what my gifts really are. I must start with my inner child healing, spending time on my own knowing.  Otherwise I will have cut myself off from that inner knowing by spending so much time in my thinking-ego-mind that I'm even confused about what others think is the perfect career.

You are the only expert on you what you need. How do you take those "cut off" parts of yourself back? You keep learning, being open to hearing from truly loving support and you keep knowing that you are intrinsically, infinitely creative by virtue of being a part of the magnificent Whole. You are perfectly you.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching 

How do I know I have low self esteem? How to fix it?

I’m guessing if you are looking around the internet for information on low self esteem, trying to decide if you have it, you are experiencing some of the following:

• You discount yourself and don’t think you have much going for you.


• You’re pretty sure everyone else feels pretty good about themselves but you just don’t.


• You treat yourself poorly.


• You think others have all the answers for you. You don’t trust yourself.


• You let people take advantage of you.


• You have an inkling that you are not living up to your potential and you would if you actually knew what that is or what it means.


• You have poor relationships.


• You feel lousy a good deal of the time (lousy might include: fear, guilt, sadness, emotional pain, anger, hurt, blame, etc.)

Having been a person who had low self esteem for many years, I know what you feel like – and it isn’t good. And it isn’t that you are defective somehow. It’s that the people and situations that were supposed to keep your automatically-there-when-born self esteem all shiny, did not do the job that you would have wanted them to do. In other words, your childhood caretakers were less then perfect and probably suffered from similar low self esteem feelings themselves.

But you live at a time when there is help for such a thing – lots of help really. If you found this article, you’ve likely found others. Some may promise you something like “7 Secrets to Good Self Esteem”.

I am sure that articles like that have some kernels of truth and help in them but mostly they don’t go deep enough and so even though you try to make use of those secrets, you still feel most of what you always felt – lousy and lousy about yourself.

So what is the answer? How does one fix it? Well, first let me tell you that there is no Arrival Building at Good Self Esteem. Building good self esteem takes work and time. It’s a journey of sorts. The journey can sometimes be painful but it is always worthwhile.

Here’s what I’ve done for the past 30+ years which has worked so well that I now have a business training coaches who suffer from the same issues themselves and want help themselves and want to then be able to help others. So what do we do?

Well, first we insist on a certain attitude. That attitude is one of “I created everything” and it means that I have chosen to believe that I created the emotionally abusive mother I had and the sexually abusive father. Now did I really do that? Who knows ? Even some scientists today are beginning to believe that we actually do create our lives. But truly, that doesn’t matter. What matters is the attitude of self-empowerment as opposed to feeling like a victim.

When I felt like a victim, not only did I have low self esteem, I also attracted people and situations who would convince me further of my being a lousy person.

Next we require you to deal with their past experiences in a way that allows the old unexpressed feelings and emotions to be brought into the light and turned into something positive.

With a toolbox full of highly useful and reusable tools for continuing the process, you go off into the world to continue growing and finding the beautiful person who you really are.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

How Do Life Coaches Deal with Feelings and Emotions?

This Is What I Do

As I've said many times, each life coach is different. So I can only speak for myself. This morning was a perfect example of how I, as a life coach, interact with clients emotions and feelings. I have a 67-year-old client who, from my perspective, is a bit afraid of her feelings. Because of that, she almost always decides that her anger is not ok. This, of course, affects her relationships profoundly. She has been married four times. And currently is in a committed relationship which seems to be much better than any she's had before. Her partner is willing to grow along with her and is open to change also. He appears truly to love her and want her to be happy.

So they have some things going on that have given her the opportunity to become angry. Things that have to do with money, control and remodeling a kitchen. Last week she was so full of feelings and emotions that she was ready to sleep in another room or leave the relationship. This week she reported having had the conversations with him that she needed to have herself be seen and heard.

Now I'm fine with whatever she does. As you know I try to have NOAGNDA with my clients but they pay me to say the hard stuff and many times to offer my knowledge, wisdom and know-how with the challenges they experience in their lives.

My experience with emotions and feelings is this. In my household growing up, I pretty much was allowed happy and sad. The two incidents my mother told me about often were when I was two and four. When I was two I apparently kept spitting cereal at her so she dumped the bowl on my head. When I was four I spit again and she washed my mouth out with soap. So the environment wasn't too open to my expressing anger. Well, when a child is hampered from expressing feelings, what happens is they lose their inborn emotional intelligence. Because that happened to me, many things came to pass in my life that forced me to finally pursue reeducating myself on feelings - both intellectually and by allowing myself to process the old ones. That's another story but I have a lot of experience and am now thought of as an expert in emotional intelligence by my husband.

So this is part of the education that often happens with clients. When we talk about emotions and feelings, I teach what I know and offer tools I've learned or developed.

That's pretty much how this life coach interacts with clients about emotions and feelings.

YOU University Coaching/Life Coach Training and Life Coaching

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