Self-Coaching Tip: Partner With Your Emotions

Did you know that emotions prioritize your thinking? For example, when I am depressed, my thoughts tend to focus on what I don’t have: enough energy, creativity, love, etc. Once my thoughts start down this path, I begin to perceive lack in other areas of my life, such as relationships, finances, health.

This emotion-thought pattern can feed on itself. Pretty soon, I begin feeling a great sense of hopelessness and I just stop trying to do anything. For many years, I tried to ignore my depression. I’d distract myself from it in an effort to make myself feel better, such as shopping or eating. But, then, as my self-coaching skills improved, I learned to partner with my depression and all that changed.

Partnering with your emotions can be very scary, at first. Emotions can feel huge and overwhelming. I never wanted to really feel my depression because I was afraid it would swallow me up and I’d never find my way out of it. But, when I learned how to partner with my depression, I discovered the depression was actually trying to help me prioritize my life and my spiritual growth.

For me, feeling depressed is a sign that I have stepped off my Spiritual Path. It means I am focusing on the wrong thing in my life. But, if I acknowledge the depression and begin partnering with it, the depression leads me back to my Self so I can continue on my Spiritual Journey. My energy returns and I no longer feel a sense of lack.

Here are some suggestions for partnering with your emotions:

• Set an Intention to partner with one emotion. Don’t try to partner with every emotion at once. That’s just too big a job to begin with.

• Pay attention to that emotion. Notice what it feels like in your body. Write down the thoughts that show up when you’re feeling that emotion.

• If that emotion was a person, what would it look like? Sound like?

• Begin a dialogue with your emotion. What does it want?

To learn more about partnering with your emotions, try our Spiritual Cross-Training program, risk free

Self-Coaching Tip: Play Every Day

As a child, I loved writing about distant planets, exotic aliens and grown-up, adventurous space-farers. But I got the details wrong. I didn't know enough of the world to recognize that cream puffs were not the breakfast of aliens or that clocks don't belong in prehistoric caves. The details were inaccurate, but I was connected to my passion for stories. I was alive and exploring my Authentic Self.

As I got older, details gained an even greater importance in my life. Now, ignoring details had consequences. Catholic school nuns insisted I learn my catechism or go to hell, classmates deconstructed my clothing style - or lack thereof - to determine my popularity, teachers demanded I behave or it would go on my "permanent record."

Eventually, I went off into the real world of adults, armed with an obsession over getting the details "right." Convinced the world would come to an end if I didn't arrive at work on time, pay the bills as soon as they arrived or iron the creases "just so" in my husband's shirts, I wrapped myself up in the "fear of consequences."

Then I discovered the greatest consequence of all: too many details will smother the soul. And the story. My Life Story, like my writing, suffered from boredom brought on by pages of insufferable details that distracted me from my Life's Purpose. I'd lost my soul-connection, that part of me that lit up with delight while contemplating reptilian monsters munching on puff pastry.

By the trial-and-error method, I eventually learned which details were important to my spiritual growth. And I learned these lessons by re-connecting to my interests and passions. In short, I re-connected to my ability to play.

In her book, Deep Play, Diane Ackerman describes the spiritual nature of play:

Swept up by the deepest states of play, one feels balanced, creative, focused. Deep play is a fascinating hallmark of being human; it reveals our need to seek a special brand of transcendence, with a passion that makes thrill-seeking explicable, creativity possible, and religion inevitable.

Re-connecting to my ability to play with words also taught me how to coach my Self. Playing teaches body-emotion-thought patterns that are more in alignment with your Spiritual Nature:

• Playing brings your body patterns into balance.Your posture and breathing changes as you relax into the fun you’re having. You breathe more deeply, smile and laugh often. Your body is moving in the patterns of ‘fun.’

• Playing shifts your emotion patterns by releasing any self-judgment. While playing, you take risks and embrace mistakes, knowing you will learn from those experiences and use the lessons the next time you play.

• Playing focuses your thought patterns on the goal of the game. While playing, you’re not planning how to complete all the tasks you have on your to-do list. You’re not thinking about housework or yard work. Instead, you know what you want and you figure out the best way to get it within the framework of the game.

These body-emotion-thought patterns are the same patterns needed to successfully coach your Self to the kind of life you want. So, by playing every day, you’re strengthening the neural pathways you need to successfully change your life.

This week, add some play-time to your schedule each day and re-connect to your Spiritual Nature.

Self-Coaching Tip: Begin Where You Are

To celebrate the New Year, I’m using my self-coaching skills to transcend the historical practice of reflecting upon the past year and choosing goals for the New Year. Instead, I begin where I am.

Think of it like the directory in a shopping mall. There’s usually a map of all the stores with a big red dot that reads, ‘you are here.’ In order to get to the shop you want, you need to know where you are in relation to it.

I need to know which beliefs are holding me back and which beliefs are helping me move forward. need the guidance that my emotions hold for me. And finally, I need to communicate with my body to make permanent, lasting changes that are easy and effortless

Once I’m clear about where I am, really connected to myself on all three levels (physically, emotionally, mentally), something wondrous happens: co-creation.

Co-creating takes me to a new place of connection. Instead of focusing on what I’ve accomplished (a left brain activity) or floating contentedly in a meditative state (a right brain activity), I reach a balance between both sides of my brain. In this state, I see new possibilities to solving any problems I have; experience deeper connections in my relationships; and receive guidance for continued self-growth and spiritual evolution.

So, I invite you to begin this New Year by focusing on where you are, right now. When you truly know where you are at, you’ll see/hear/know where you’re going this year.

To experience how this might work, enroll for my free eCourse, "Self-Coaching Techniques," and learn one way to quiet your Inner Critic.