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“I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. I found that suffering is optional. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment. That joy is in everyone, always.” ~  Byron Katie

Our story is a reflection of the thoughts and beliefs we have about who we are, what we can attain,  what we can accomplish and what we’re worthy of receiving.  Who would you be without your story?  You know, the story you tell yourself everyday about who you think you are.  The story of your worth and value. The story of the many things you have experienced, that you wish you could change.  The story about why the person you loved left you.  The heart wrenching story you replay over and over in your mind of the betrayal and rejection you experienced, by those you loved the most. Reliving the childhood story that you’ll never be good enough.

The negative story we tell ourselves, tends to….

• depress us…rather than elevate us.
• anger us…rather than calm us.
• breed chaos in our lives…rather than harmony.
• bring about confusion…rather than mental clarity.
• drain us…rather than energize us.
• attract the things we don’t want…rather than the things we desire.
• drive people away…rather than deepen our relationships.

I want to invite you to change your story.

To change your story, you must change your thoughts.  To change your thoughts, you must change your beliefs.  Frank Outlaw said,

“Watch your thoughts, they become words;
watch your words, they become actions;
watch your actions, they become habits;
watch your habits, they become character;
watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”

As a coach, I get to experience up close and personal, how negative thoughts and belief systems prevent many of my clients from living their best lives now.  There negative thoughts and beliefs have placed a lid on their happiness, potential and effectiveness.

To begin the journey of changing your story, I want to suggest you take these seven steps…

1.  Ask yourself the following questions…

• What is the “truth” about my story?
• Who have I become as a result of my story?
• Who would I be without my story?
• Why must I change my story?

 2.  Feel and embrace every emotion that surfaces

As you answer each question above, you will experience a myriad of emotions. Don’t dismiss or ignore them, FEEL them.  If you need to scream, scream.  If you need to cry, cry.    If you need to hit something, punch a pillow.  Just stay in the moment and summon the courage to embrace what comes.

3.  Envision the life you desire

Schedule time to visualize the life you desire.  When you are living your best life, what does it look like, feel like, sound like, smell like, taste like?  What are you doing?  What new relationships have you developed?  Who’s no longer in your life?  How much energy and vitality do you have? Where do you work?  Where do you live?  What are you passionately pursuing?   Next, write down everything you envisioned and experienced during the exercise.

4. Write a new story

Review your notes and write a new story.  That’s right…create the life you desire!   Don’t focus on how you’re going to get there, just focus on the WHY!

 5.  Identify the habits, behaviors, thoughts and beliefs that are not congruent with your new story

To change your life, you must change anything that doesn’t serve you; that’s not in alignment with what you are endeavoring to create.  On a sheet of paper, list every habit, behavior, thought and belief that is not congruent with your new story.

 6. Create “positive” affirmations to help you begin to reprogram your subconscious mind for success

Affirmations are words or phrases, said repeatedly, which affirms a single thought about yourself or other people.  Affirmations become beliefs.  This is how your internal programming was created.  When you repeat something over and over, it becomes impressed upon your subconscious mind.  This impression becomes a belief, which becomes your reality.  Whatever you repeatedly say, your subconscious mind accepts it as true, whether it is or not.  You will need to create positive affirmations, to assist you in creating and living your new story.

Review the list of every negative habit, behavior, thought and belief you wrote down, and write a positive affirmation to counteract them.  Here are some examples:

Negative Affirmations	Positive Affirmations
I am so unhealthy.  I don’t take care of myself.	I am healthy and make daily commitments to live a healthy lifestyle.
I will never find a good job.	I am working at a job that I love and am able to make significant contributions.
I don’t have enough resources to make this happen.	I have everything I need to accomplish my dreams.

 7. Increase your awareness of what you say when you talk to yourself

Many of us have a chronic problem of negative self-talk.  I’ll prove it to you.  For one day, I want you to wear rubber band around your wrist.  Every time you say something unkind or negative about yourself, I want you to pop yourself.  I have had a few of my clients do this for a week.  Within 24-hours, they were astounded by their level of negative self-talk and complained about the pain to their wrist. I insisted that they wear the rubber band for an entire week and asked them, “Would you rather experience this pain for 7 days, or experience the pain of not changing for 7 more years.”

I want you to increase your awareness about the things you say when you talk to yourself.  As soon as you say something negative, I want you to immediately cancel it and say something positive.  Remember…

your words create your world!

I am the first to say that changing your story is not easy, but it’s necessary.  Joyce Meyer said, “You can suffer the pain of change or suffer remaining the way you are.”

 I wish you much success on your journey.

CHANGE YOUR STORY AND ASPIRE TO GREATNESS!

Always Aspiring,
Your Friend and Partner-In-Success

“Life is constantly presenting us with opportunities to grow and to aspire to greatness.  Yet we fall short in rising to the occasion, because we were trained at an early age to resist anything that feels uncomfortable.  Hence, we miss the opportunity to grow and therefore remain as we are; dead to our potential.” ~ Rosalynd M. Rambert

In this season of my life, I am holding myself accountable to LIVE. DO. BE. THINK. HIGHER!  This declaration is no easy task; as it has required me to explore who I am on a deeper level.  Like any exploration, one never knows what will surface.  What an interesting discovery it’s been!  Exploring yourself on a deeper level compels you to ask probing questions about who you “really” are and what you really want.   Just when you think you have answered the question, you’re confronted with a deeper and more profound question.  Additionally, you must reckon with the belief systems of your childhood, carried with you into adulthood, that you continue to embrace as your own, but they really aren’t.  Yes, I can hear you saying, “What the heck is she saying?”  Essentially, what I am saying is that most of what we believe are not really our beliefs; they were inherited and accepted as our truths.  Hence, when we begin to awaken to who we “really” are, our new-found thinking and beliefs conflict with our limited and negative beliefs.  This can be extremely challenging.

Think about it for a moment.  How often do we challenge what we believe and why we believe it? Interestingly enough, when someone else challenges our beliefs we will defend the beliefs as if we’re engaged in a war.  Yet, we don’t exercise the same energy in answering the question, “Why do I believe what I believe?  On the path of awakening, you are forced to wrestle with the truths about who you really are, what you believe and what you really desire from life.  Sometimes, the wrestling can take days, months and even years.  Embracing who you really are requires courage.

On the other end of the spectrum, I am challenged to love unconditionally; forgive quickly and be totally accepting of other individuals.  If I endeavor to be the change I want to see in the world, then I must love at a higher level.  Loving at a higher level requires tremendous courage; which leads to tremendous growth.  However, this growth process is very painful.  Why?  Because it takes courage to love people that don’t love you back.  It takes courage to be kind to people that assassinate your character and speak against your vision.  It takes courage to be vulnerable when you’ve been betrayed, rejected and completely misunderstood.  It takes courage to give people another chance when they’ve left you bleeding in the middle of the street.  While these experience have been extremely painful for me, I understand that they were necessary for my growth.  Each and every experience has brought me to this place…this moment.  Without these experiences, ASPIRE TO GREATNESS would not exist.

Relationships will grow and stretch you like nothing else.  What I have come to realize is that my periods of tremendous growth; have been birthed from my greatest pains.  Hence, I am learning how to embrace my pain more quickly.  More importantly, I have learned how to be kinder and more compassionate with myself when I am going through my “stretching” process.  Furthermore, I now understand the scripture, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  The truth is that most people are asleep…asleep to their behaviors, habits and belief systems that keep them bound and prevent them from loving on a higher level.

I am now fully aware why I became preoccupied with the subject of “courage” over a year ago.  Without courage, it is impossible to grow and love on a higher level.  Maxwell Maltz said, “We must have courage to bet on our ideas, to take the calculated risk, and to act. Everyday living requires courage if life is to be effective and bring happiness.” Throughout life, we have learned that whatever doesn’t grow will eventually die.  If your relationship doesn’t grow, it will die.  If your business doesn’t grow, it will die.  If you don’t grow, you will die emotionally, mentally and spiritually.  Growth is necessary for our survival. However, we must recognize that we can’t experience it without its partner – pain.  While it’s our nature to avoid pain, I invite you to embrace your pain.  Feel it, flow with it and dance with it.  Embracing your pain allows you to truly connect with who you are.

I am thankful to God for the growth that I am presently experiencing and am excited by what awaits me.  The greatest gift that I have been given in this season of my life is that I have come into the knowledge of who I really am and who I want to be.  The more I embrace who I am, the easier it is to ignore the opinions others have about who they think I am and what they think I should be doing.  Wayne Dyer said it best, “What people think about me is none of my business.”  I finally get it…thank God…I am free!

I am committed to LIVE. DO. BE. THINK. HIGHER!  ASPIRE TO GREATNESS MY FRIEND!

It’s been said, “You are what you believe.” If you believe you are a winner…you will win.  If you believe you are a failure…you will fail.  If you believe you are successful…you will attain success.  If you believe you can do it…you will.  If you believe you can never lose weight…you will remain overweight.  If you believe you can’t find a wonderful person to spend the rest of your life with…you won’t.

Your belief helps to create the fact.  Hence, be careful what you believe because that is what you will experience. Your world is a manifestation of your belief system, which is driven by your desires and controlled by your thoughts and actions. Mahatma Gandhi said, “Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.”

What do you desire….really and truly? Often people do not have a clue about what they really want, but they have a good idea about what they do not want. Now is a good time to assess the quality of your life, evaluate your goals and determine the end result you want to achieve. Put your goals in writing and place them where you can see them throughout the day.  

Here are three powerful tips to help you accomplish your goals:

1. Be inquisitive
We have a plethora of choices in which to research, learn and acquire new information.  Whatever you are looking to achieve in life, the resources available to you are endless.  Some of my favorite online resources are YouTube, Ted.org, LearnOutLoud, other blogs and ebooks.  An extremely valuable resource for me is people. Yes, people. Talk to as many people as possible who are already successful in what you want to achieve.  Identify people within your network that can be of assistance to you. Introduce yourself to them and explain your purpose for contacting them and ask them for some advice in helping you achieve your goal. More importantly, let them know how you can be a blessing to them and/or ask them how you can serve them. The worst thing that can happen is that they ignore you. The best thing that can happen is that they provide you with the information you need and offer support and encouragement in achieving your goals.

2. Be unique
Next, take the ideas and tips you have compiled and carefully examine them one by one.  The ideas that resonate with you, begin to massage them and make them your own.  There are some amazing things that will happen during this creative process.  Think of how you can approach your goal in a way that will be interesting and fun.  Get real creative and think outside of the box.  Expand your thoughts about what is possible. Resolve to not be confined and limited by your belief systems and do not be afraid to take risks.

3. Be positive
As you have learned by now, to obtain anything worthwhile will require that you endure challenges.  By now, you have learned that if you have a positive attitude and remain focused on your goals you can overcome any challenge.  However, it’s not just enough to think positive; but you must adopt a positive “daily diet.”  As the saying goes, “you are what you eat.” How much positivity do you ingest on a daily basis?  What do you view regularly?  What types of information do you read? Are your conversations throughout the day, more negative or positive?  When negative thoughts come to visit, how do you entertain them?  Are your goals and vision board posted where you can see them? Today, make a conscious decision to create a world for yourself that radiates positivity.

“A belief is only a thought you continue to think. A belief is nothing more than a chronic pattern of thought, and you have the ability -if you try even a little bit- to begin a new pattern, to tell a new story, to achieve a different vibration, to change your point of attraction.”  Abraham-Hicks

Make a commitment that you will not let anyone or anything, including your belief systems stand in the way of reaching your goals.

ASPIRE TO GREATNESS MY FRIEND!