Think Before You Act

… you can’t take it back.

Believe it or not all words and actions have consequences. Some more severe than others. Sometimes when we are out of balance in our lives, we make impulsive decisions that may affect our futures. These impulsive decisions are made simply with the intent to make us feel better in the moment and NOT made for our highest good.

Life is meant to be led one step at a time. Every emotion is meant to be felt and dealt with, not run from. If you are making an impulsive decision to feel better in the moment and run from your pain, it will catch up with you. You cannot run from yourself and life offers us no “quick fixes,” that is for sure.

Slow down, take life one step at a time. Ask yourself before you make ANY decision, “is this decision going to bring me to where I want to be in my life” OR “is it going to sabotage my job, my love, or my relations with friends and family?” Once we slow down and process the implications of our actions, we may find that we are in a better place to make a different decision.

It is in a calm and centered space that we find the ability to NOT react hastily and make a decision we may regret. Life is too short to impulsively throw it away on a bad decision. No one needs to look back and regret something they have done. Stop. Slow down. Be in the moment and think before you act. I promise you if you live your life from this centered space, you will always make an informed decision NOT an impulsive one. We want to own our lives, not regret them.

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What Lies Beneath

… is what matters the most.

We tend to spend most of our busy lives focusing outside of ourselves – spending thousands of dollars every year to make ourselves new and improved via personal trainers, gym memberships, weight programs, skin care products, facials, reconstructive surgeries, make-up, expensive wardrobes and accessories, etc… But what does all that really do?

Fixing the outside of ourselves is fine, but it is never a replacement for healing the inside. We are a work in progress and it is much easier to bury our emotional states and hide behind a few simple cosmetic changes then it is to go deeper into our beings and ask the tough questions – are we really happy with the lives we have created for ourselves? Most of us run from that key question and keep “prettying up the front yard” because we think that if the outside looks ok, we can forgo the mess inside. That never works. Eventually the door breaks down and your dirty laundry is exposed on the front lawn.

In life, it is not just important to focus on the tip of the iceberg when clearly there is destructive ice sitting just below the surface. In other words, it is the 10% above the surface that is the easy stuff; it is the sneaky 90% below the surface that really demands our attention. Just because it isn’t showing day-in and day-out and just because you are able to hide it successfully from the world, doesn’t mean it isn’t there to wreak havoc on our lives.

Slow down and take a long, hard look at who you are and how you show up in life. Does your life accurately reflect who you are? Are you dealing with the real issues that are confronting you or are you just stuffing them below the surface? Dealing with the hidden ugly is the only true way to beautify your surface. Our faces never lie. They show a lifetime of what we have stuffed down beneath the surface. The time has come to excavate what we have submerged and shed the light of consciousness on it. In raising up all that we have suppressed, we have the ability to transform our lives into a happier and more meaningful existence. What are you waiting for?

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Know-it-All’s Never Know it All

… they never do.

Just when you think you do not need to learn anything new, you realize you know nothing. We’ve all been there. Sometimes our cups are full with “stagnant water” –  our jobs, friends, relationships, hobbies – our lives sometimes get stuck in a rut and a static film grows over our surface. But how do you open up to something new when your ego thinks it already has all the answers?

Complacency and arrogance undermine our worth and render us “too big for our britches.” When you build up your resources of knowledge to a certain point and stop, you shut down to new ways of thinking and you stop growing. Not only do you stop growing, but you start aging (mentally and physically) and ignorance reins.

Ask yourself… why keep a cup of water that is dirty? If your life has become stagnant to the point that drinking from your own cup will make you ill, why not take a chance and open up to something new?

It is the work of the ego that is afraid of failure. Often times, we prefer to never try and never learn something new for fear that we will look foolish if we do it. So we stay contented drinking from a toxic source and we wonder why life never improves.

One thing is for sure. Know-it-all’s know everything except the way out of the prison they have created for themselves. Know-it-All’s NEVER know it all. For it is in the certainty of having all the answers that causes us to stop asking the key questions. Life ceases to be exciting and worth living when we lose our curiosity.

Make room in your cup for new experiences. Tip out some of the old murky water and bring in some fresh water. Don’t worry about where the water comes from, take a chance and trust that from wherever it comes, it will be better than what is in your cup.

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Life is Not a Popularity Contest

… it doesn’t matter who likes you, it only matters that YOU like you.

In life, you are not always going to be everyone’s cup of tea, and that HAS to be alright. Nor should you want to be everyone’s cup of tea. We are not in high school anymore, your value and self-worth should not be judged by what other people think of you. It should come from within. The only judgment we should be concerned with in life is the judgment we place on ourselves.

We tend to look outside of ourselves for validation within. We compare ourselves to others – what they are doing with their careers, how they are living, how successful they are, their relationships, etc… Your life will never be yours if you are forever looking to others for inspiration.

Here’s the deal… Not everyone is going to like you. Not everyone is going to understand you. Not everyone is going to “get you.” It’s just the way it is. Feel great about yourself anyway because who you are is ALWAYS good enough. In fact, it is better than good. It is perfect.

When you can learn to love the person that you are separate from those around you, that is when your life will really take off. Channel all that energy – thinking about all those people and what they are doing “better than you” and how you are measuring up and put that energy into your goals, your passions and really start to feed your soul from the inside-out. You will start to see that you will emanate a glow that will make others want to be near you. Popularity is an inside job. Do the work inside, and the world around you will be magnetically drawn to you. 

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What Your Resist, Persists

…what you look at disappears.

In life, we fail to realize that everything is energy. When you do not want to have a specific experience because you deem it negative, you resist that experience. That action of resistance is a firm and decisive action that tells the universe, NO. But what we are not seeing is that it does not alleviate the experience you are having. It only brings more “NO” to your door. By resisting something, you are putting the energy of NO out into the universe.

For example, if you do not want to feel emotional pain from a relationship and you fight the experience you are having because you cannot surrender to the pain and transform it, then you only manage to perpetuate the pain you are feeling. And what is worse, you are putting out the sign on your front door saying, “No.” Again, that no does not stop your pain, but it will certainly put an end to good experiences that were coming your way. No simply attracts more NO – no happiness, no good fortune, no laughter, no new relationship, etc… No says means NO or nothing.

If we could learn to surrender to our life lessons and all experiences – both good and bad and not fight them, then we would remain open enough to invite the energy of “openness” or YES to the table. The sooner you can accept your situation and surrender to it’s greater lesson, the sooner that energy of YES will transform the situation and open you up to more positive experiences. Yes says, “I am open, I am willing, I would like to receive.”

Surrender to your experience and allow whatever is going to be, to be. Remember, what you resist, persists (and by doing so encourages the energy of NO). What you look at disappears (and by doing so transforms all experiences into YES). It is, by definition, always your choice.

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A Hole Brings You Deeper

… it just does.

As pedantic as that sounds, these are truly words to live by.

All of us have “holes” in us. These are empty and void places inside of us where we have suffered from pain. Some people will allow those holes to consume them, even define them. They allow themselves to feel broken because of them.

The role of a hole is not to break you or take you down into it, the role is to take you deeper into yourself. It is a type of character building and the lessons are rich. We emerge from every hole a stronger, more balanced and more beautiful being.

We should never identify ourselves with the pain that the hole inflicts upon us, but we should identify with that place of strength, grace and fortitude that that hole brings us to. By going deeper, one finds jewels – whether we speak of diamonds and other precious jewels/metals or even buried treasures. The deeper you go, the higher the probability one will strike “gold.” The gold you find is the essence of who you are.

As we say, don’t stay stuck in the hole, learn its lessons and appreciate it for the teachings and for the level of understanding it brought you to. These are great gifts in the game of life. That which tears us down, brings us to the heart of who we are. Only by being brought to your knees, can one understand how powerful they truly are to remain upright at all.

Your holes are your tapestry – they make you who you are. They tell the story of what you have endured and where you have come from. The more holes you have, the more you have truly lived and the more learnings you have to share with others.

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Fake it Till You Make it

Stop thinking you are not ready. Stop putting off your tomorrows. Learn to redefine success.

Nobody ever thinks they are ready to embark on something new. In your mind, you will never have enough money to have your first child or move into that big new home or buy your beach house or get married or change your career. You will always tell yourself that something is first needed before you can make that move. This is your ego’s way of keeping you safe from a perceived failure. For most of us, we would prefer to never try, then to try and fail. The ego is clever, it comes fully equipped with defense mechanisms to protect it from looking foolish or “less than perfect.” This shows up as procrastination measures and procrastination ultimately marks the difference between surviving and thriving.

Adhering to the ego keeps you small and keeps you from becoming great. Most great opportunities in life force us to grow and move beyond our comfort zones. Feeling comfortable is a sign to you that you have conquered and achieved. Feeling discomfort is a sign to you that you need to persevere and challenge yourself. The choice is always yours. Life never happens to you - it happens for you. The secret is in believing in yourself.  Even if you think you do not have what it takes, you keep moving forward. Fake it ’til you make it – then it will be yours. By taking on the challenge with an air of certainty and belief in yourself, you will always earn that which you are seeking.

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Simplify Your Life

… by creating SPACE.

We make things harder than they have to be. We tend to create lots of physical clutter in our spaces and that always translates to mental and emotional clutter. We are energetic beings and we are highly sensitive to our surroundings. Everything is energy. The energy of clutter weighs very heavy on the nervous system and stimulates a level of discomfort and confusion in our minds. When we create space in our physical surroundings (by clearing off our desks or cleaning out our closets or throwing away knick-knacks from display spaces), we create a sense of space to breathe and BE. This newfound physical space translates directly into a mental space of ease. The less you own, the lighter you feel.

The way it works is that physical clutter stimulates the mental response of “confusion and chaos is near at hand” and the emotional response is generally a level of unease which roughly translates to either increased states of anxiety or the opposite - lethargy and laziness. Either way, as energetic beings, our surroundings dictate our moods. If you want to be happy and easeful in your life, SIMPLY THINGS. Get rid of clutter and objects that have no importance to you. Creating space in our lives helps to create space in our minds and hearts. Learn to lessen your load so life can become happier and much more easeful.

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Out of Tune

Sometimes life just needs a little bit of an adjustment.

Not everything always goes as planned. Life can be likened to a beautiful symphony – instruments need to be tuned up in order to play together in harmony. Some days our instruments are just off – some days are just bad days. But that is all they are – bad days. Without the bad, we wouldn’t appreciate the good. Finding the harmony in our symphony (the world around us) is about finding the balance in our own instrument (ourselves). Finding that balance will help the other instruments tune themselves to your notes and vice-versa. Beautiful music can only be made by looking at what is going on around you in your life and adjusting yourself accordingly. By tuning up your instrument, you are allowing yourself the opportunity to acknowledge what you are sounding like (how you are feeling) and you afford yourself the opportunity to bring yourself back into balance.

Everyone has bad days. Allowing those bad days to take over the quality of your life and your inner balance is just as bad as leaving your instrument un-tuned for periods of time. It just takes a subtle adjustment to hear the vibration of change. Look around you, notice how you are feeling everyday and don’t just ignore what is going on. You need to hear the other instruments in order to play in harmony with your world. We are part of the whole. When we give up on trying to find that balance, we are the ones who suffer. When we allow ourselves to fall out of tune for long periods of time, we fail to give ourselves the chance to hear the sound of our own beautiful music. It is a form of self-sabotage. Wake up – find the beauty in the sound of your own happiness everyday. Never miss an opportunity to tune-up your bad day. Staying in tune will keep you performing beautifully in the symphony of life.

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Pack your bags lightly

You take it all with you.

It is human nature to carry your bags with you. All of it. We all carry heavy burdens of issues – packed up discreetly or not so discreetly as our “baggage.” We insist on carting this baggage around with us into every new relationship, job and situation.

We try and show up as the best version of ourselves, yet we will not let go of our bags. We stand smiling at the front door while we are invited in by our host and instead of discreetly storing our bags away in the guest closet until it is time to unpack them, we find ourselves running into our host’s main room and exploding open our bags like a crazy person – exposing the most intimate parts of ourselves (panties and all!) at very inopportune times. Why do we do this?

In life, there is a big difference between being open/vulnerable and being needy/unconscious. You always want to be yourself and be genuine but at the same time, it is important that you are conscious. It is important that you realize everything that you have packed into your bags and recognize it is yours when it rears its ugly head out of the baggage. Never confuse its contents with those of your host. In other words, own what is yours and give the rest back.  

You have a lifetime to sort through your baggage. Try and streamline it – deal with your issues and evolve onwards. You will blame people less, resent people less, distrust people less and grow consciously into the being you were meant to. Life gets easier for you and people find it easier to be around you. Do the work – lesson your load, you do not need to throw your dirty laundry all over your partner’s living room in order to be seen and heard. There is a better way to show up. Pack your bags lightly, the soul is eternal and your baggage is your load to carry lifetime after lifetime. How heavy are your bags?

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