Get your 20/20 hindsight NOW.
Ever look back on an event in your life and see EXACTLY why that happened to you?
You see the lessons, the learning, the growth. Maybe you see how it shaped you as a human to be more compassionate or more ambitious or more organized. Maybe you look back on that thing with appreciation, or gratitude or just a deep satisfaction that you were strong enough and had the resilience to pull through, even when things looked their bleakest. Maybe you’re just fuckjng grateful you survived, because, there were times when you didn’t think you could...but you did.
You’re here. Reading this.
THE THING IS YOU DIDN’T HAVE ALL THAT KNOWLEDGE WHEN YOU WERE IN THE THICK OF IT.
When you were in it, you didn’t know how it would turn out. You didn’t know you’d be okay, days or decades later.
You did the best you could with the information and the resources you had at that time.
Looking back now, from this new place of courage or...
Discover the Healing Treasure
In times of crisis, whether it's COVID-19 or the threat of another financial recession, what do you do with a problem?
One of my favorite books to read to Declan is “What Do You Do with a Problem.” (I recommend it to my adult clients as well...as basically, everyone.)
In the story, a little child discovers he has a problem. He didn’t want it. He didn’t ask for it. He really didn’t like having a problem...hey, who does, right?
He tries to avoid it. He tries to pretend it’s not there. He tries to ignore it but it’s still there.
And the more he ignores it the bigger the problem becomes.
Kind of like our emotions.
Everyone experiences negative emotions. I don’t care how positive you are, or how many OM’s and affirmations you do, as we go through this life we experience a rainbow of emotions, some darker shades than others.
But we don’t like those negative emotions. They feel icky. Yucky....
Find Joy in Times of Global Crisis
In times of crisis, whether it’s COVID-19 or the looming financial crisis, where is joy? Where did that illustrious angel of vibrancy go? Did she disappear?
No. You just missed her.
Joy is only found in the present moment, really being 100% fully in the present moment.
She is rarely found in the past for she is either tainted with “what could have been” or “what should have been” or “what would have been.”
And she is rarely found in the future, where Fear is a stakeholder in monopolizing your thoughts.
No, joy is in the present. She lives and breathes there, praying that you will tap into her.
She’s in the whisper of the wind against your skin. She’s in the experience of your partner’s touch as he passes you. She’s is in the burrowing of the large bowling ball of your child’s head into your chest as he says “mama, cuddle me.”
Yes, joy lives in the moment - in being fully fucking in it,...
Who Do You BE Now?
It is in the face of chaos on and crisis that who you are, who you have been working on becoming comes to light.
This is when the rubber meets the road, sweetheart.
WHO DO YOU BE WHEN THE WORLD FEELS LIKE IT IS FALLING APART?
Who do you BE when fear smacks the world in the face with a two-by-four?
Coronavirus is one thing. Yes, it is contagious and there are fears when it comes to that.
And, sure, you may have some fears about staying at home for a few weeks cooped up with the fam.
But, the financial impact of shutting businesses and schools down when 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck will hit...hard.
The fact that the stock markets just hit their largest dip worldwide since 1987.
The fact that the Federal Reserve just 96 hours ago invested $1.5 Trillion dollars in short-term loans. (HINT: the last time they did that...it was 2008.)
THE FEAR OF A GLOBAL CRISIS IS ONLY BEGINNING.
And, the mentors, experts, doctors and top-level investors that I...
Time to Step Into the Arena with Fear (and Brené Brown)
CREATIVITY IS REALLY SAFE WHEN IT IS IN THE CONFINES OF YOUR LAPTOP, RIGHT?
As you know, I made my commitment, I would be finished with this book by Summer. Summer is nearly here.
And I am much closer, far closer - 76,000 words.
Between 200-354 pages.
Now I’m just filling in the gaps, connecting the dots between the Virginia Woolf stream of consciousness stories, analogies, and metaphors to the meaning, the meat, the action steps of personal development...
THAT MAKE THIS BOOK A LITERAL HANDBOOK FOR REPROGRAMMING YOUR MIND AROUND FOOD.
And I go deep - into the fears, frustrations, programming, patterns, myths, trends, and collective issues as a whole that one by one we MUST reshape around our perceptions of what and how we eat and how we perceptive our bodies.
It is an outpouring of the ten years of pain and frustration that I had figuring out HTF was I going to heal from an eating disorder. How did I need to start thinking about myself? And how do I...
Become the Resilient, Creative Mompreneur You Were Born to Be
The creative process is a lot like eating shit.
How do I know? I've literally tried it. Obviously this was not an intentional thing...
Over a delicious Sunday breakfast of waffles and jam, I was sitting with my son on the couch, reading as we gloriously reveled in carby goodness - okay, I was the one doing the reveling. Declan was enjoying the usual.
He’s recently discovered textures - bumpy, sticky, gooey, rough, smooth, tickly. So, when it comes to food we’ll normally play a game if his hands are sticky with jam. He’ll hold out his hand with a whine, saying “dirty” and I’ll be the vacuum cleaner and gobble up his fingers. Cute, right? Right.
Until it’s not…
I missed the moment in our interchange - it was probably in my own moment of bliss, closing my eyes and savoring the sweet, figgy taste of waffles - when Declan stuck his fingers in his diaper.
It was him saying “dirty” and the whine that followed that jolted me...
How to Balance the Rising Feminine Energy and Masculine Energy
I’ll never forget the feeling of my head hitting the bathroom wall as I stumbled over the tub, stunned that I’d been pushed violently across the room by a man I loved. I’ll never forget the time I was sitting in a truck at a gas station in New Orleans, waiting on my guy to pay for gas, and a random man stuck his hand through my rolled down window and felt up my thigh. I’ll never forget the time my Krav Maga training came in handy at a nightclub in Vegas, when a man tried to physically restrain me from leaving “his” VIP table.
YES, WHEN IT COMES TO SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND ABUSE, I CAN SAY #METOO.
I say that though not as a victim, because, for me, if I identify with that label (consciously), then it takes me out of my power…and it gives it to those men. Now, I love men. I’m married to a great one and I’m raising great one. My mission, though, has always been for women and as a coach, I focus on the future.
RIGHT...
Trouble Waking Up, Sleeping Beauty
I was pretty opposed to sleeping at all since birth. My poor mother said I only slept for about an hour and a half a night as a baby. (She’s up for sainthood in my book for that alone.) And, napping was never my thing as a kid. I used to be so paranoid that I would miss something. That if I slept, I wouldn’t finish a project. I’d miss a deadline. I’d miss a client. But, as I got older, and more and more sleep deprived, I realized how desperately my body craved catching up on my sleep. Ironically, because of my lack of sleep, my fears came true. “The longer, more continuously, and later at night you work, the less efficient and more mistake-prone you become,” states Schwartz in my latest book-obsession, The Power of Full Engagement.
“In addition to its energy renewing function, sleep is also a period during which substantial growth an prepare occurs — most of it at the deepest level of sleep, when slow-wave delta brainwaves are...
Is it really killing you?
I see it, day in and day out. Women who are overwhelmed, overworked, over-stressed, and underappreciated. With so many things hanging over our heads these days, it's no wonder we can some times feel like "It's killing us."
But is it really?
As a coach in Neuro-Linguistic Programming, when I work with my clients, I take what they are saying LITERALLY. So, sometimes, like in the case of a client saying "it's killing me," it may sound extreme, but I take them seriously. You see...
Your language is a command to consciousness itself.
If I ask you to create a picture of your dream life, and you say you can't "see" it. In NLP, I take it as, you LITERALLY cannot make a picture of your dream life in your head. You don't see the snapshot of that vacay photograph of you sipping a latte across from your lover while working on your laptop after some damn good lovemaking. You can't see it.
If I ask if you understand the concept, and you don't, I haven't given you enough logical evidence to...
Trust me, I'm a Unicorn.
A few weeks ago, I was dangling my feet in my friend’s pool, rocking out to an amazing Chilean + Japanese reggae trio at a fabulous party in the nestled in the Hollywood Hills. The only child at the party, a sharp little six-year old, plopped down next to me, wearing a T-shirt that said, “Trust me, I’m a unicorn.” She and I ended up having the most imaginative conversation about how to throw a killer tea party on the ocean floor, what running like a cheetah feels like, and what kind of unicorn we each were. My right brain left the party satiated with creativity.
TWO THINGS I ABSOLUTELY LOVE ARE CHILDREN…AND UNICORNS.
However, it took me a long time to learn to embrace my love of unicorns. (I’ve always loved kids. I’m one of those women who’s always wanted to be a mom.) But, unicorns on the other hand…
You see, since I was eleven, I was obsessed with acting older. I always felt I had to prove myself, prove how smart...