This is an important one, and it's very important to not skip this step because it's a sneaky one that we often don't consider, or our conscious brain tends to reject it.

It's the idea that ‘Hey, what if I actually want to get much, much worse?’

What if you want your relationship with yourself, the way you talk to yourself, your self-confidence, or whatever else it might be that you're working through at this part in the process, that you actually wanted that to get much, much worse. 

There can be all kinds of reasons for this, but I'd like for you to consider that for yourself. You can pull out your journal and write about that, but I'll give you a few ideas and things that I've seen about how this plays out beneath the surface. 

Part of this idea is that we've decided that this is what works for us. And we've also decided that it's scary to do something differently. If we were to change this, what would happen? And this isn't another stick to beat yourself up with or anything lik...

We experience a lot of emotions throughout any given day.

Throughout our lifetimes, we have these emotional experiences, many of them are highly charged- particularly if you've had some kind of trauma in your life. It then sets up this pattern wherein the emotions don't typically get addressed. I don't necessarily want to say processed, but addressed in a clear and straightforward way. 

Over time, these emotions tend to get tucked away and they get tucked away in our body, they get tucked away in our energy, and they act as a kind of landmine in there. Like boobytraps.

That's the definition of a trigger. Someone says something and all of a sudden we just have this reaction to it and it can be kind of scary when we see ourselves reacting in a way that is maybe angry or just really hurt, or just really hits something inside of us. 

That brings up a ton of unexpected emotions and that's a scary place to be. And that is something that we really want to consider, the fear of the unknown...

Consider this question very carefully...

‘What if you accepted yourself exactly as you are now?’

I'd like you to sit with that question for just a few moments and notice what it is that comes up for you when you consider that. 

What if I accepted myself exactly as I am?

Maybe there is a fear that nothing will change, maybe there is a fear that you'll miss your chance. Maybe there's the worry that you'll be stuck with the same ways of doing and having or a worry that you'll fall prey to the worst ‘worst parts’ of yourself and destroy your life or your relationships or your health. 

But what I'd like you to do is to also consider, what if the opposite might be true of that. What if, as you accept yourself fully, all the aspects of you, rather than fighting and resisting or making choices out of fear, that you get to simply choose how you want to be and what you want to do or have in your life. 

Now I'd like for you to pull out your journal and write what things come up for you wh...

Today I'm going to share with you one of my favorite hacks for living a healthier, more enjoyable life. It's called "upgrading your vices."

This isn't mine. It came from a health coach that I had years ago by the name of Maria Whalen and she talked about this in the context of food at the time. 

One of the things that we do if we want to indulge in something, is we tend to make it wrong. It's like a ‘guilty pleasure’. So we eat the cake and then we shame ourselves for eating the cake. And certainly, you know cake is generally not the healthiest choice on a regular diet if you want to feel amazing in your body and have consistent clean energy. 

Let’s consider the chocolate. Let's say that you want to have some chocolate. Rather than reaching for the Hershey bar, or just the standard kind of mass-produced thing, you go after the most beautiful raw chocolate that you can get your hands on. Something that's going to actually feed you and has things in it that really let the properties ...

Today I wanted to share public service announcement. A very simple one at that. And it’s this…

“Yes,” and “No,” are complete sentences.

I know that might seem kind of silly at first. But consider how often a clear yes, or no, is followed by a litany of reasons and justifications.

This habit of justifying our decisions is another facet of the need to be right where we get into over explaining. It’s a protective mechanism designed to do two things…

1. Preempt external resistance and criticism by making the case before it’s even an issue. and
2. It gives us a fall back position in case things go wrong.

On a deeper level this habit is often driven by guilt. It’s as if we’re doing something wrong, so a clean clear "yes" or "no" suddenly isn’t enough. We have to explain or justify our decisions to others.

Now if you have agreements in your current relationships you may need to honor those. But rather than jumping right to explaining, try letting your simple "yes" or "no" stand on it’s o...

Often times, we wind up allowing things in our lives that are not what we really want. We tolerate it because "it's not that bad, it’s alright, no big deal, it's not really that important." And we tend to diminish ourselves and talk ourselves down from what we really want and talk ourselves into what we're willing to settle for. 

Your tolerance is going to determine exactly what experiences and what things you have in your life. You'll have what you tolerate so it becomes really important to look at what it is that we're tolerating in our lives and more importantly, the story that we're telling ourselves that makes it okay. That's the piece that we really want to start looking at and to change for ourselves to rewrite that story that says “It's fine, yeah it's not really what I wanted, but geez, so many other people are struggling so I guess this is fine. I'm really okay. I don't actually need it.”

All of those things which may sound really familiar to you are parts of that story tha...

When we are trying to be gentler with ourselves, one of the things that we do to take off the pressure is to give ourselves as much time as we need to complete a project, to get something done and turn it in, whatever that might be in your world.

I submit that this is actually really counterproductive and it creates more stress and anxiety and adds more pressure than we think. So one of the most powerful things that you can do for self-care is to set a deadline for yourself. Here's why...

If you give yourself five hours to do a 30-minute project, that 30-minute project will probably stretch to at least five hours. We have this funny way when we have time and space for filling it up. But when it comes to productivity, it's really helpful to have those deadlines set. And once it's set, you have a container for that project, and then you can get to it, stick to it and get it done. It works so much more efficiently and you get back into this idea of time bending and getting time to do w...

Time is a made-up concept.

It's a man-made idea and in our brains, we often have a very different idea of time than our actual experience. So when you're in the concept of time, when you're thinking about time, you're usually NOT just thinking ‘I have plenty of time. There's always more time, I can make as much time as I need.’

Our conversation regarding time is usually about lack and it's about working against the clock and fighting for the deadline.

Yet when you're actually grounded, fully embodied, and in the flow, time passes very differently. You can see this in Einstein's example where he says, “A minute with your hand on a hot stove, seems like an hour and an hour with your beloved seems like a minute." 

We have this very different experience of time as we move through our lives. But what if you could bend time and create as much of it as you want?

You are the source of time.

Gay Hendricks talked about this in his book, ‘The Big Leap’. And if you want to hear more about i...

Did you know that rushing is actually a form of self-abuse and it's incredibly pervasive and incredibly acceptable in our world?

That is something I'd like for us to consider and to even think about changing for ourselves.

Why is rushing a form of self-abuse? Well, think about all the pressure that we put on ourselves to get things done, to check the box, to do things right, and what we do inside of ourselves in order to do that.

We actually rob ourselves of the opportunity to really be fully present in an action, to do it to the utmost of our ability, and to bring our full attention, effort, and intention to whatever it is that we're doing. 

We often have our heads in so many different places that we don't get a chance to be really fully present and intentional with each thing that we're doing.

And so we wind up rushing and then what, we abuse the clock. We make time the enemy and then time’s not having that. So all of a sudden, time is working against us and then we rush more a...

All of us have things in our lives that we tend to save for a ‘special occasion’.

What happens sometimes is we get into this mundane way of living and nothing in particular seems that special, or it takes something really, really big to make it a special thing. So we wind up with these beautiful things, clothes, jewelry or other special things in our lives, the special China that just sits on the shelf or in the closet collecting dust. But something really beautiful and magical happens when we use those things, it brings a sense of specialness to it and in this course on self-love, one of the things that we want to do is bring more of that specialness into all areas of our life. 

Today I want to invite you to bring out the special thing, whatever it might be. Maybe it's a special outfit, maybe it's your expensive China, or maybe it's something else for you that you consider special. I'd like you to bring that out and give yourself an opportunity to wear it, to play with it, to exper...