Would You Wear a Size 5 Shoe?

If someone you dearly loved gave you a size 5 shoe for a gift would you wear it even though you wore a size 8?
What a silly question right? Of course you would not squeeze your size 8 foot into a size 5 and wear that shoe around causing you great pain and discomfort. That would make no sense at all. You would likely just thank the person for their gift and inform them that you wore size 8 not 5. However what if they had the belief that every one wore size 5 and it was the right size to wear? How would you respond to that belief?
This is a funny thought. I was working with a client this morning in which this analogy came to me in relation to taking on family beliefs. Sometimes we take on and continue old family beliefs that are harming and hurting us just cause they were "given" to us from those we love and trust. Just like squeezing a size 8 foot into a size 5 shoe would cause us great pain and if done over and over again eventually would disform our foot, so do our old beliefs cause us pain and distort our beliefs and behaviours in life. It is healthy to review the beliefs our family has passed down and see if they are helping us in our lives and if they have any basis in reality or if they have become only self fulfilling prophecies in our family. One belief that comes up in families often is not to surpass you parents success. You need to keep your level of success close to your parents as to not show them up. This is one of those size 5 shoes that will keep your foot from growing as it is meant to be. It is self serving on the parents part to protect their ego and beliefs about themselves. They need to keep others down in order to make themselves feel better. They likely don't do it on purpose but will criticize or sabotage family members who look like they are about to surpass them in success. Their belief benefits them and no one else. If you find this pattern and belief in your family you can just acknowledge that it is on old size 5 shoe that does not fit your size 8 foot and discard it. If the family reacts to you challenging the belief you will know that it is just them not understanding that you have a size 8 foot. There is nothing wrong with what you are doing and eventually they will accept the change and allow the belief to be different. In fact possibly they will learn to be proud of your success and you will have shifted the belief for all family members to create success in the future.

There is an old saying:
" The best thing you can do for the poor is not be one of them"
I cannot remember the author I am sorry. But it is, I believe a true statement. Show them the way through your shedding of the old way of thinking and behaving and creating a successful present and future!

EFT and Rapid Eye are great techniques to help you shed and discard old family beliefs and traditions that are no longer helping but hurting you.

You can check out EFT at: http://www.emofree.com

Happy Fall Everyone!

Letting Go When it is Time

Today my blog will be more personal. My mind has been on the subject of letting go of those we love when it is there time to transition to whatever is next in life for them. Sometimes that transition is death. We have a 15yr old kitty that we just had to put down yesterday as she had a tumor in her body that was causing her to starve to death. Very sad. However a great lesson in life for my kids to learn to let go of something or someone when it is time. To learn to grieve and say goodbye knowing that life will go on and we can move through the grief process and grow and learn from the experience. My son said last night that he felt bad the times he did not want the kitty in his room when she was meowing at the door. He started to take the regret road but recovered quickly as that is a road of judgment and usually does not lead to learning, only blaming. The whole family is sad but practicing how to let go and grieve. Blessings to our wonderful kitty, Princess Jasmine! We love you and miss you!

The Language of Emotional Intelligence

I went on a book run at Barnes and Noble last week and picked up a few books to read and expand my understanding of myself and my clients.
The first one I started was on the topic of Emotional Intelligence. I have never read a book about EI but have heard a lot about it. I was done with it in less then 2 days. It just what I needed right now. Funny how that works. :) When we are better able to understand ourselves and others there is so much less judgement and pain. This book is great at helping us understand our own challenges and the challenges of others in the area of communication and EI.

Here are some of the concepts from the book:
If we did not learn to experience emotional intelligence as a child then we still can!
Our first experience learning how to get our needs met as an infant without words is how we are "suppose" to learn EI.
Learning to managing stress helps us to be more emotionally intelligent.
You can learn to sooth yourself in a healthy way and therefore making yourself more able to communicate in an EI way with others.
Our body language says so much more about what we feel than our words.
We need to be comfortable with your own emotions, good and bad, without getting overwhelmed by them, that is where the soothing skills comes in.
Without EI a relationship will experience many more pitfalls and pain then if the couple is able to create EI within themselves and bring it to the relationship.

That is just a short idea of what is in the book. The book provides exercises for improving your emotional intelligence.
The books title is: The Language of Emotional Intelligence
The Five Essential Tools for Building Powerful and Effective Relationships.
by Jeanne Segal, Ph.D

She also Authored Raising Your Emotional Intelligence
Which I have not read yet.

Happy Reading!

Harmony and Rhythm

"You are part of the universe, no less than the stars and trees, and you have a right to be here. And whether it is clear to you or not, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should...." Desiderata

We are part of the universe and our lives are governed by the same laws that govern the rest of the cosmos. We need to keep a balance as does the rest of nature. We take time to grow and time to heal. Our lives will always move in cycles because that is the universal law: We need time to rest and recuperate, as do all other living things.

Taken from RET Life Skills Manual

http://www.rapideyetechnology.com

The Swim Lesson

I was sitting at the pool a few weeks ago watching my kids swim lessons. While I was there I noticed a father and his daughter of about 6 or 7yrs old in the water. The father was trying to teach his panic stricken daughter how to swim. I noticed as they entered the water the panic on the young girls face. The father had put a life jacket on her and he knew that she was safe. However she did not know that at all! She was able to keep her panic under control as long as her dad was holding her. She trusted him to keep her safe as long as he was holding her. However as soon as he would start to let go she would panic and start crying and begging him not to let go of her even in the slightest bit. She had a life and death belief about the water. Water can kill you. The unknown is unsafe and so forth. Again her father knew she was completely safe but she did not know the same truth. I was stricken by how different their belief systems were about the water based on their life experience. As the father worked with this little girl over the next 30 minutes her belief radically changed. She ,through experience, learned that with the life jacket she would not sink and die. She could move about in the pool and even began to feel pride in her learning. She waved to her mother who was watching from the side feeling pride and excitement in her new experience. Her father was very patient and always kind while helping her stretch her belief about the water to a new experience that could possibly save her life one day.
I thought a lot about belief systems as I watched this display of belief systems and how they can be changed when faced with a new experience. How often are we willing to challenge our negative beliefs with a new experience? Most of the time we unconsciously actually create experiences that only support our beliefs. Her belief was that water was dangerous. Was she right? Of course she was. Many people drown every year for a variety of reasons. However one of the most common reasons is not knowing how to swim. So if she held onto her belief and never learned to swim was she really safer? Probably not. She would actually keep herself from learning that which might safe her life some day. So facing and changing her belief about water was the most beneficial thing for her to do.
I challenge all of us to pick a negative belief we have and challenge it with a new experience and see what happens. Does the belief begin to change and shift as new information enters the mind? Did what were afraid of happen really happen? And if it did was it as bad as we thought or was it much milder then we perceived it to be?
If you are having trouble even begin to create a new experience then consider using EFT to help you tap out the fear and create a more positive belief. Keep tapping till you start to feel the fear or resistance lessen so you can move forward and experience something different.
You can check out EFT at:
http://www.emofree.com

Focus On What You Want; Not What You Don't Want

You may not always get what you want in life but you almost always get what you expect.
I see this principle played out over and over again in my own life the lives of my clients. We want something different but can't get past the fear of what we think is really going to happen. When we are thinking about what we don't want we are so much more likely to experience it in life. And the more emotion there is behind the thing we don't want the more likely it is to manifest.

This principle is explained in "The Sedona Method" like this:

" Here's how this works. Perhaps we have an experience that we don't like (the boss yells at us), or something happens to a person we care about (a friend gets sick or has a car accident), or maybe we don't like the news we hear that day( the stock market takes a nose dive). Therefore, we want to change it. Either we think, "I hope this doesn't happen to me," or, "I hope this never happens again," which is where we get stuck. Since the mind sees and creates in pictures, it does not accurately translate negations- words like not, never, or don't. As a result, it interprets our hopes in reverse and sustains them.
If you don't believe me, try and right now to not picture a shoe. What happened? If you are like most people, you immediately saw a shoe in your mind's eye. The harder we try to not create what we do not want, the stronger we are holding on to the idea; thus, the more likely we are to create it in our reality. "

So make a choice right now to release the emotions you have feeding the negative beliefs and fears in your life and start to think more about what you really want with emotion. Maybe you could pick something small to start with and practice. Don't be scared to find out how powerful you can be in creating your own life.. you are already doing it now..your just learning how to do it on purpose!

Starting Your Day Out Right

As we try and focus on the positive in our lives it is helpful to start our morning out with some questions of awareness.

1. What am I happy about in my life right now?
2. What am I excited about in my life right now?
3. What am I proud of in my life right now?
4. What am I grateful about in my life right now?
5. What am committed to in my life right now?
6. What can I do today to improve my life?
7. How can I help another person today?

As we ponder on these questions while starting our day it helps to keep us in response and action instead of reaction to situations and people during our day. We keep focused about what we want to feed and improve in our lives so we choose according to those values and goals.