An Aha Moment in Clarifying Challenges and Oopportunities

I had a session with my coach today.  Yes, I too, use coaching to support myself and my expansion.  Currently I am doing mentor coaching as part of a coaching accreditation process.  Today, however, I needed a personal moment.

I have been feeling a little frazzled this week.  My heater went out.  My office is in transition.  I have several projects underway.  And I am exploring technology options for my business, a process that sometimes makes my head spin!  Part of the coaching process is to clear whatever might be up that needs to be released before starting the actual coaching…and boy was I clearing these current challenges.  Amidst the clearing, the opportunity arose to focus the session on what was happening for me rather than on the mentor coaching process…and I took it.

My focus to explore today became: how to balance staying in the positive and connected with my flowing energy of my truth and still acknowledge, hear, and clear what shows up in life…these challenges that somehow keep appearing.  Along today’s journey, I realized several important beliefs.  The first is that I do expect life to have ripples, bumps in the road, challenges.  I don’t expect life to flow smooth in a continuous line.  My first choice was whether that belief is true for the nature of life and true for me.  And my answer for today is that I do expect life to have some interesting twists and turns.  However, I made the decision to hold them as “interesting twists and turns” instead of “bumps, ripples, and challenges.”  A subtle word difference but big in how the energy of it feels to me. 

The second belief that came up was that expanding, growing and learning need to have a stretching and challenging component to them.  I had accepted that not only was life full of learning opportunities but they existed within  the challenges (old wording).  That to make a diamond, there needs to be pressure.  That life’s biggest lessons come through our darkest times.  Although I do know that I have the strength, caliber and grace to deal with the challenges and have been holding the positive and powerful space to go through these challenges, I was given the pause today to see if I really wanted to continue to hold the belief  that it has to be a challenge.   Do I want to hold that I need constant challenges, bumps, and ripples in order to learn and expand?  NO! 

I realized that the above statements about growth and challenges are part of a cultural expectation and authority expectation that was taught to me and I had unconsciously agreed to…but I don’t have to hold that belief.  Even as recently as this past year, I was hearing from a marketing mentor that the idea of being in a flow state involves a space of discomfort, of stretching.  That being an entrepreneur means being constantly in the state of discomfort because we are reaching up and above in order to grow.  This is very different than how I feel about flow.  For me, flow is being in intimate connection with my infinite self and alignment and it is so easy, I’m so on, life is flowing.  I am not stretching or feeling discomfort.

These pauses and realizations provided the perfect space to reframe these beliefs that aren’t serving me.  I’m a big believer of creating belief statements which express the energy that I value and is in alignment with my truth.  I use these statements to reframe an old idea and look at it and read it daily to create a new pathway of thinking until it becomes an autonomic belief.  For today, the new statement I came up with is “I am open to expanding my life and living my fullest truth while accepting the opportunities and exploring the interesting twist and turns as they arise with comfort and ease.”

I’ll let you know how it feels over the next days and weeks.  However, I can tell you now, that simply having the Aha and creating the new statement made me feel light, lifted a load off my chest, and put a smile on my face.  And for today, which is all I have right now, it’s perfect!

What do you need to clarify in a moment of pause?

Inspiring Resources

I was recently listening to a teleclass between James Roche and David Neagle while taking a walk.  I love to use “down time” to listen to inspiring material.  I do this while cooking, while cleaning the house, while walking by myself  when I don’t need ponder time.  This technique creates a win-win situation…I can find time that I wouldn’t normally have to listen to uplifting things, and I enjoy mundane activities more by doing this.  It’s great self care for me.

Anyway, back to the teleclass.  David Neagle, who is a prominent life coach with a rags to riches story, was talking about two critical elements he discovered early on in his journey that were breakthrough tools to his moving forward.  The first was an internal shift that he sums up as “change your attitude”.  He recognized that a stumbling block, at that time, was his current attitude and beliefs.  He had been told to change his attitude by others but at some point it became an “internal aha” that clicked.  And changing his attitude was key.  Just in changing his attitude, his behaviors began to shift and he opened up to receive new opportunities in his life. 

He reinforced this shift by modeling the behavior of someone who held the picture of success that he was looking for.  And this was his second element to moving forward powerfully…finding mentors who can shorten your learning curve by not having to re-create the wheel.   He used growth seminars then coaches but one could use many different things as a mentor.

Both of these elements…aligning your beliefs to serve who you want to be today and finding resources to achieve those goals…are things I not only live but also offer up to my clients.  And one tool that I use to achieve both is Kundalini yoga.  Yoga may not on the surface look like a mentor because it’s not a particular person, at least not for me since I don’t have a single guru.  However, the teachings as a whole in Kundalini yoga offers a road map to living a life of healing and harmony that has been invaluable to me.  It is 5,000 year old, time tested technology and I see it working everyday in my life.  It is powerful and quick in transforming outdated patterns and is the single greatest element I have found that has transformed my life in huge ways.  The mantras and meditations also serve to expand my beliefs and align my mental beliefs with my higher truth.

What resources do you use to inspire and transform?  Taking a moment to reflect on this question can in itself me an important step on your journey.  As you explore this question, you might also be inspired to discover new resources to support yourself.