Do you ever go through those frustrating times when you are dealing with internal conflict? I'm assuming we all do. Sometimes something is bugging you, but you just
can't figure out what? Other times you know what is bothering you, but you can't quite figure out how you feel about it or if you should do anything to resolve your internal conflict. It can be so frustrating and take so long to get to the bottom of the emotions, if ever. The only thing that is certain is that there is discomfort.
So, how do you get to the bottom of what you are thinking and feeling? Most of the time if you can just figure out what you're feeling and why, you can make logical decisions to solve your problems. If you can't understand yourself, it's tons harder to solve the problem at hand. After having many conversations and reading books, I've learned a few techniques that help me to get to the nitty gritty of my emotions.
If your feelings are your guide to better decisions, a brighter attitude, gratitude,and a happier life then you need to really learn to hone into one feeling, love.
Love is your guide to take care of yourself and love yourself. Love gives you your sense of self-worth and the value of those around you. Love helps you approach and deal with conflict in a positive way. Love guides you through both major and minor life choices.
When love is so powerful, how is it so easy to suppress its messages to us? Rather than focusing on love, we often choose to focus on fear; fear of loss, fear of being late, fear of suffering. The fear speaks louder than love and before we know it we feel stressed out and exhausted. We spend all our energy guarding ourselves from the things we fear, when the entire time we could be releasing ourselves from stress by following our bliss and joy.
The first step to manifesting your dreams and desires is to get clear about what you want. Think about it, feel it, and most importantly write it down. There is something so powerful in putting pen to paper when getting clear about your desires. You can type it up on your computer if that is easier. Mostly, put your wants down and be as specific as possible.
If you find you've been aiming without direction in your career, sit down and write what you'd like to see happen in your career. Do you want a raise? Do you want a
promotion? Do you wish to increase your responsibility on your current project or switch to a different project or company? Whatever it is, get clear about it and write it down.
The first thing to remember about being clear about what you want is that you should be honest with yourself about what you want. Your wants are your desires, and you can make them whatever you want them to be no matter how far out they may seem. If you want it and desire it, put it down and feel it as if it has already happened.
My mentor, Rhonda Shasteen, taught me early on to be true to myself. I've probably spent every day since then trying to discover my true self. I think you continue to discover it a little bit every day for your entire life. I've learned it doesn't mean be selfish. It means listening to the inner voice guiding you and honoring that voice. Listening to your inner voice is a challenging enough practice when producing your own words, thoughts and actions, but what about when you are reacting to others' words and actions? How do you honor and respect your true self in those instances?
First, you must slow down enough to acknowledge the other person's behavior. Sometimes others make you feel great and other times they make you feel down right awful about yourself. I know people have treated me with enough disrespect that it has caused me to doubt my own value. Life's hard enough without having to manifest a positive attitude after interacting with others. That's why I love Lady Bird Johnson's quote, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
Second, if the other person is making you feel bad and you understand why, do something about it. I'm not saying be mean, turn away from the negativity orseparate yourself when people don't treat you well. You should most certainly address conflict as quickly as possible, honor and process your emotions, and work on the important relationships in your life. If a relationship/friendship is in the early stages and someone consistently dishonors you and doesn't hold you in high esteem, then that person is likely not someone you want to invest too much time with in developing a friendship.
Thirdly, understand and respect yourself, your value and your worth. That doesn't mean go about haughtily demanding to be treated like royalty. It does mean having an attitude of humility and modesty with wise judgment of yours and others' behavior. It is ok to stand up woith yourself and love yourself enough to walk away from disrespect. I don't have to do it ofte, but every time I do, I feel empowered and freed from self-imposed oppression.
Finally, surround yourself with a positive environment as much as you can. That doesn't mean you won't have a bad day or argument every now and then. It does mean that over the long haul you have reinforced yourself with like-minded people to encourage you on your journey in life. For more tips and nuggets of wisdom from me and my mentor, Rhonda Shasteen, please read my book, Views from the 13th Floor. Respect yourself because you can!
It is okay to love yourself. I love myself, finally. It's been a long journey to learn self-love. I'm only now embarking on the journey of self-actualization and leaning fully
what loving myself means. After thirty plus years of people pleasing and so many repeat occurences of hurt and disappointment, I knew it was time to make a new choice.
I've known for a long time that I needed to learn to be true to myself. My mentor, Rhonda Shasteen, has been teaching me how to be true to myself in baby steps over the years of our mentoring relationship. It didn't really come to a head until earlier this year when I learned The Secret.
The basis of The Secret is love and gratitude. The power of love for self and others and the powerful practice of gratitude have the power to move people, places, and circumstances to change your life. While I knew this was true and had experienced the effects of this practice in tangential areas of my life, it took much longer for self-love to place a firm root into my heart.
I grew up learning to be a people pleaser and serve others. Acts of service is a love language, after all, and there is something romantic in sacrificing yourself for another person. In the end practicing sacrifice projects a feeling of lack and comes back to haunt you.
As all the lessons, memories, pieces of wisdom, and hurt from the past surfaced, I starting to understand what it would take to achieve true love of self. This is a love of self that fosters kindness, compassion and respect, not vanity.
Here are 5 steps I learned to accomplish self-love.
1) Be aware. Tune in and acknowledge your thoughts and feelings. Accept who you are and what you are feeling. Understand that there is nothing wrong with what you like and what you desire. That's what makes you who you are. Some people will like it and others will not. That's ok.
2) Accept yourself as you are. Take care of yourself and give yourself time and space to work though emotions. Accepting things about yourself you've always told yourself you needed to change will not happen in one fell swoop. It is a process. We have managed to conditions ourselves to believe the lies we tell ourselves about who we should be in order to be happy rather than just being happy with who we are.
3) Grow who you are. Allow yourself to be who you are. Tap into your child and teenage selves to reconnect with early joy or hurt. Process it and start making decisions to be who you are. If you love community, be in community. If you prefer to be alone, then be alone. If you need intellectual stimulation, pursue what will bring that into your life. I love to write, and I write from my heart because I have so much love to give, and this provides me with a beautiful creative outlet to be exactly who I am.
4) Establishing boundaries. If you have spent a lot of your life trying to be someone you think others will approve of, then start setting boundaries to make space in the world to be yourself. This can be hard and emotional, especially if you've never made yourself a priority in life. I can tell you from personal experience, the first time I stood up for myself and established boundaries, I cried. I let it out and then felt empowered. The second time I did it, I was more certain I was doing the right thing, but I still cried. I balled and balled, but at the end of it I knew that making a new choice to love myself was the best thing to do. Each time I make that choice, I know it will be easier and less emotionally draining, but the end result will be beautiful. I know we must choose our battles, so choose them wisely. Just have the courage to choose them when you need to.
5) Practice and stay positive. Be happy and love yourself now because it is the fastest way to accomplish change and manifest the happiness you desire in your life. Changing your attitude and choosing to love yourself is the first step to changing your life. Choosing a positive attitude beyond that will be a powerful force in your life.
Do you feel like you can take risks at work, risks that could potentially propel you forward? Do you play it safe because that paycheck means ends meet at the end of the month? What would happen if you chose to be frugal and saved extra money for a while and built a cushion for yourself? Would you be more willing to take a risk with a safety net below you? I would. That's what I mean by building freedom into your life. Creating protection around you, allows you to have the freedom to take more risk today.
My mentor, Rhonda Shasteen, taught me about this concept of building freedom into life when I've expressed my reservations in the past about being bold. I always wanted to be bolder and take some risks but was afraid of crossing a threshold. Acting out of fear, often means doing nothing or not follow your instincts, when being bold could make a big difference on a project. With time I've built some freedom in my life and gained some confidence along the way allowing me to be bolder from time to time. I learned that each time I experienced success when I chose to go out of my comfort zone and act in boldness, that it was far less frightening the next time I needed to step out in boldness.
As I watch these 2012 Olympic Games in London, I'm always amazed by the professionalism, poise and athleticism of the athletes from around the world. Sometimes I wonder how these sports were invented
Photo by john Cheng
in the first place. I am most amazed when I look at the gymnasts. The U.S. Women's Gymnastics Team is full of teenagers facing more pressure and competition than most of us ever sees our adult lives. How can a sixteen year old keep it together and perform? More than that, how do these athletes come back after making an error like stumbling or falling all together?
I always think of the Chumbawamba song that says, "I get knocked down, but I get up again. You're never going to keep me down." Unfortunately, the rest of the song isn't about facing a fear factor, but the chorus gets the point across. When an athlete falls in the Olympic games, she gets back up and keeps going.
I'm a trained opera singer, and sometimes I don't hit every note perfectly. What happens when a musician makes an error or a singer cracks a high note? You keep on going.
What is harder than continuing on is suppressing the voices of fear that enter your mind once you screw up. It's the ones that tell you how humiliated you'll be if you do it again. They tell you that you aren't good enough and a myriad of other negative things.
The first thing you have to do is acknowledge it. Separate yourself from the incident. Then you must trust your training and past history of performance. With time and practice, you can develop the mental prowess to suppress the negative voices and concentrate on only positive ones. You can envision yourself succeeding, and mostly, you press on.
I won't lie that time can erase some of the hurt, but we don't always have the luxury of time. So as I face any voices of fear or doubt that enter my brain each day, I like to think of the Olympic athletes and follow the encouragement of watching them perform time after time.
How do you approach your colleagues at work from a relationship perspective? Do you interact at the office only and talk when you must? Do you have lunch together sometimes and part ways in the evenings and weekends only to resume office relationships on Monday? Or,do you go the extra mile to engage your work colleagues into your personal life away from your desk?
I'll admit I've generally fallen into category number one. I have tended to do my own thing and not say too much. But, over time, I realized it didn't add to my success at work. I think the perception if you are a loner, is that you are unhappy and don't like people. That may be you, but it's not me.
I recently had the opportunity to join a friend and his colleagues out for a team dinner. Over the course of the meal and conversation, I realized the rapport and camaraderie built up among the team was so strong, and I was convinced that events like this meal are part of the reason why. They treated each other like friends in addition to co-workers. They look out for one another and treat each other with the love of friends.
After recently going through a major attitude adjustment about choosing joy and happiness over listening to voices of fear and timidity, I decided I wanted to adopt more of the inner office relationships that I observed at the dinner. Since then, I made a concerted effort to stop and speak to people as I pass by in the office. It doesn't have to be an in depth conversation that pulls people away from their work for a half hour. We know those people too. Since making an effort to invest in my office relationships, I've noticed I'm seeing more success in my work. I enjoy the work I'm doing more, and I like engaging with my friends while I happen to be at the office. There are many ways you can improve your work relationships. Just try.
I envision developing a work family in the true sense of the word, family. I want to support my work family through busy times, joys, and trials. Just think if your work environment can supplement your emotional state the way your home life can. If you have those strong relationships in place, your happiness at work can really propel forward.
As in any relationship, you don't enter the state of closeness immediately. It takes time and a conscious effort to be considerate of your neighbor. If you've got nothing else, just smile and say, "hi."
Do you have a dream you want to pursue? Do you desire to embark on a new career path, move to a new city, or try for something that seems far fetched and out of reach? I know I sure do. That's how I felt when I first thought of publishing my book, Views form the 13th Floor: Conversations with My Mentor. I wanted to try, but for the longest time assumed no one would care about it. Over time, the dream remained, and I found a way for it to become a reality.
I have assumed many wrong things in my life and listened to fears far more than I care to admit. Listening to the voice that says, "You can't," has often kept me from even trying for something. Then one day I got fed up! If our thoughts determine our lives, then why can't my thoughts tell me, "You can!" That's what I tell you each week, and I should practice what I preach.
After reading The Secrect, The Master Key System, and other books that talk about the powerful impact our thoughts have on what manifests in our lives, I decided to put away that voice of fear. I am going to try for every dream and vision I have that remains with me for more than a fleeting moment. If I continue to see a goal and have a dream, then why on earth shouldn't I try? The Secret says to use the power of visualization to picture your dream as a reality and then release it. Rhonda Byrne and contributors to the book say not to worry about the "how," but to just stay focused on the "what."
There is a lovely quote by Martin Luther King Jr. that says, "Faith is taking the first step even if you don't see the whole staircase." Doesn't that summarize the beginning of achieving all of our goals? We just need to take the first step and have faith that the next step will appear followed by the next step, until the entire staircase to your goal has been revealed.
When I once expressed a fear of trying to my mentor, Rhonda Shasteen, she told me to think of all the potential outcomes. She then said that if you're OK with how things can turn out, you should go for it. Sometimes that means it won't turn out how you like or imagine. She said that unless the end result might be death or something permanently damaging to you or someone else, then why not go for it?
Henry Ford said, "Whether you think you can or you think you can't, either way, your right!" Just believing in yourself and focusing on seeing yourself reaching that end goal can make all the difference. I'm going to keep trying each day and encourage you to do the same because you can!
I recently had the great fortune to attend the Texas Chapter Network of Executive Women (NEW) luncheon featuring the phenomenal corporate coach, Donna Drury. On this exquisite Dallas day, a room of around 300 gathered to listen to Donna present on building your personal brand. Her talk is called, "BRAND U!: A Recipe For Your Success Professionally & Personally." This is an amazing lesson in career guidance to take you to the next level.
Over the course of Donna's talk she helped us explore who we are today, how we want to be perceived, and how we project our brand to others.
Two key take-aways for me were to:
Ask for what you want. This is a lesson in boldness to be sure to communicate your desires so others don't assume them for you. For example, if you are going through a challenging time with a sick relative or a new baby, be sure to let others know if you desire new projects. If you don't people may assume you don't want any more on your plate because of what's going on in your life. You may not desire more work, and if you don't want additional work during a busy or stressful time in your life, it's important to communicate that as well.
Everyone has strengths to offer. You do and so do I. We need to understand our strengths and explore growing them. If you are lucky, hopefully you work with a team that values you and plays to your strengths as well. As you build on your strengths, you likely have a richer, more nourishing environment to address your weaknesses in a way that your weaknesses aren't the center of attention.
Beyond my two main take-aways for career advice, I encourage you attend one of Donna's talks or to reach out to Donna for coaching and insights, because she's got an incredible story we can all learn from. While you're at it try one of her amazing cookies. I encourage your to embrace your brand and invest in it to grow yourself. You Can!
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