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.

Self-Coaching Tip: Your Soul's Desires Activate the Law of Attraction

Sometimes knowing about the Law of Attraction can get you into trouble. You begin to measure your spiritual growth by what you’re attracting into your life. You know, getting the flu means you're harboring less than joyful emotions, lower back pain means you have a poor relationship with money, feeling fear means you're spiritually lacking. You judge what is coming into your life, and subsequently, you judge your self. But Spirit, in it’s infinite wisdom, is sending you exactly what you need to attract what you truly desire.

Here's an example from Belinda Ryan, a Master Spiritual Life Coach:

"While going through a sticky divorce, my lawyer told me I couldn’t sell the house. However, my ex-husband wasn’t paying alimony, my lawyer refused to do any more work until he was paid, and my checking account was overdrawn. I needed the money that selling the house would bring me.

"I felt stuck between a rock and a hard place. ‘Why?’ was a question all too available.

"Realizing my question put me in a ‘victim’ place, I asked myself, ‘What can I do for myself in this moment?’

"I broke away from my upset to take a shower. While calming down under the warm water, I remembered to ask myself some more connecting questions such as ‘What do I really want?’

"My answer shocked me: ‘Well, I really want to stay in the house with my children!’"

Get in Touch with What You Truly Want, Not What You Think You Want

The Law of Attraction is always working to bring you what you truly want; not what you think you want. Belinda learned that the Law of Attraction would make it impossible for her to give up what she truly desired even though logic told her she had to sell her house in order to provide for her children.

The Law of Attraction is activated by your desires (emotions). It doesn’t take into account what you perceive as the ‘logical thing to do’ nor does it take into account any judgments you may have about your own desires.

As long as you remain unconscious about your deeply held emotional desires, you feel helpless and powerless to deal with whatever you’re attracting into your life. Only when you have a self-coaching process to bring into conscious awareness your deepest desires can you begin to feel empowered and consciously activate the Law of Attraction.

The most miraculous aspect of the Law of Attraction is that it doesn’t keep score. For example, once you’ve connected in with your Soul’s Desire and gotten clear about what you want, the Law of Attraction goes to work. You don’t have to clear your account of all the times you unintentionally or unconsciously attracted something else.
To Activate the Law of Attraction, You Must Allow in Your Deepest Desires

Allowing is a self-coaching skill that requires specific body, emotion and thought patterns. Once Belinda began to “allow” (stop resisting) her Deepest Desire to stay in the family home even though it appeared financially foolish, the external situation changed immediately.

Belinda’s attorney, who had refused to do any more work for her until he was paid, changed his attitude. He worked to get the back support payments from Belinda’s ex-husband so he could be paid. This also gave Belinda the money she needed to provide for her children.

Over the following months of the divorce proceedings, Belinda realized how much stability she and the children felt because they stayed in the house. If they had moved, Belinda and her children would have had to deal with two major life-changing stresses: moving AND divorce. Staying in the house, a familiar setting, gave them a sense of comfort and security during the major changes that occurred because of the divorce.

Belinda also had a new intention for herself: “I am open to other possibilities so that I can recognize solutions when they arrive instead of remaining blinded by my panic.”


(excerpted from "Spiritual Cross-Training: REAL-izing Your Authentic Power in Today's World)

Intention is Everything!

When I first began keeping a journal, my intention was to record all the horrid little details of my life to protect myself from having to repeat them. But the intention – protection – was coming from a place of fear. I felt powerless to stop the misery in my life and so I’d focus all my attention on my misery, hoping to find a way to stop it. Of course that didn’t work. The more I focused on it, the more miserable I became; my misery, like a scratched record, stuck in one place, kept repeating itself ad nauseum.

And then, one day, a friend gave me a copy of The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. The author, Julia Cameron, suggests writing ‘morning pages’ to allow us to get out of our own way and tap into our creativity. Since I was tired and bored of my own stories, I decided to give it a try. I had nothing to lose.

Surprisingly, the format of my journal entries didn’t change much. I still recorded every little miserable detail of my life. But, now my Intention had changed. After a few days of this, I began feeling lighter, less afraid. After another week, I discovered a very old, buried belief I had:

“If I forget anything, someone will die.”

Uncovering this belief was quite a shock!

I’m not sure where it came from, but I knew/felt it was an explanation I had developed as a very young child to protect myself. I looked at the dozens of journals I had written over the last few decades. Every single one of them was born from a child’s need to feel protected.

I began writing each day to this inner child. Telling her I was now an adult and I had discovered easier ways of protection. I thanked her profusely for loving me so strongly that she would use all of her energies to ‘remember’ everything in an attempt to protect me from others. I told her that was a lot of responsibility for such a little girl and, if she was ready, I was willing to take over now.

I felt her relief in my body. She was more than willing to give up this job and become a little girl again. We continued conversing on the pages of my journals and after a few more days, when she could see that her belief was no longer necessary, we created a solemn ceremony and burned all the old journals.

Once I took over the role of protector, this small inner child surprised me once again. Relieved of her responsibilities, she showed me another aspect of her amazing power: she was the source of my creativity! She was wild and joyous and a wannabe writer with a wicked sense of humor. She couldn’t wait for us to begin writing every day, delighted when her words appeared on the page. She’d giggle when I’d look at what we’d written and was surprised at seeing paragraphs and sentences that I had no memory of writing.

After forty years of recording my misery, it took only a week for the healing to begin once I changed my intention. Now, I was partnering with my fear and need for protection in a new way. This new partnership led me back to this young part of myself who held the power of my creativity. Now, 10 years later, she’s always present when I’m writing and wants you to know that writing this story was her idea.

What's your Intention for today?


To learn more self-coaching ideas, join our Spiritual Cross-Training program on May 18, 2009.