Be A New You In the New Year!

You’ve heard it before, be the change you want to see in the world. Just another way of saying if you want different results than last year, you must change.

You Can Teach a Dog of Any Age New Tricks!

So when did change become synonymous with hard, uncomfortable, and unpleasant? Is it no wonder we resist change?

Try this, take a moment and remember a particularly happy event, and I’m guessing if you backtrack in your memory a bit, you’ll also see that something in you changed before you experienced that blessed result.

Perhaps you prepared for a new baby, or planned to join your life as husband and wife with another? Maybe you took a course, changed jobs or moved.

Those were the actions that set you on a new course and brought new events to you. But before that, you changed who you were being.

New Year, New Patterns of Behavior, New Results

This year, I’m going to be exploring ways to bring about positive change that are not hard, uncomfortable, or unpleasant, but are in fact fun, easy, expanding, and life affirming. As you change yourself in all the ways you most want, your life experiences change in all the ways you want.

New Year Resolutions For Being

This year, join me in starting a list, not of what you’ll do, but of who you will become. Add to that behaviors you will endeavor to repattern and you’ll have an award winning recipe for change in the most enjoyable, effective and speedy way.

I’d love to hear your recipe for your new BEING this year.
Comment below or on Facebook. Would love to connect!

My sincere wishes for you all to enjoy a very
Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous New Year!

Christmas Is A Time For What? Guilt, Stress and Anger?

It’s a wonderful contrast, this time of year. Everything around us is shouting of joy, peace and cheer.

But does anyone notice the proliferation of depression, of stress? Is it any wonder the incidence of drinking to relax increases?

What if those feelings had a different purpose than we thought?

I have an idea that dark cloud of depression that can roll in as we grow close to the holidays is really just a coping mechanism, “cover” if you will, holding down a building tension of guilt, stress, and anger like a giant lid so that it doesn’t explode forth, taking casualties, leaving behind a mess of regret.

I remember a Christmas eve night years ago, alone with my two, small children, little more than $10 to my name, I sat in a Taco Bell, tears leaking down my face as my kids laughed and ate their burritos.

I felt guilty that I couldn’t be the superwoman I thought I should be, that I wasn’t yet able to do the impossible that I thought was necessary to restore my small family to a better quality of life than living week to week. I felt financial, ex-marital, and holiday stress combined to an extreme. And I felt so angry I could barely unclench my hands from the balls they would form as if of their own accord.

Awareness of my feelings led me a deeper awareness of those around me.

Looking back, my children now graceful and confident teens, I see the situation differently than I did then. Then, I could only see my suffering.

But now, I see a woman who’s guilt was trying to wake her up to the strength of purpose that wanted to step up and lead, a stress that wanted to alert her to value and place a priority on caring for her body and needs to last out the long run, and an ager that wanted to assert the boundaries that would create true safety, security and well being for her children.

…which led to new choices in actions…

Despite knowing mentally, that my emotions can provide much needed and useful guidance in situations, and can even help me shift my situations to what I do want, I can still find myself, initially, in resistance of such emotions as sadness, anger, guilt, jealousy, or overwhelm, especially at this time of year when it’s even easier to react to my expectations or unhealed hurts and disappointments from the past.

It’s the skills I learned as I confronted and worked with those emotions that still serve me today when strong feelings come up. Many are the same skills I teach or use working with my clients.

The best time to learn how to work with your emotions is when you’re smack dab in the middle of feeling them. And the holidays are the perfect time to use what’s showing up in your life to learn how to use those emotions in ways that can take you to new territory, using new equipment.

…so I didn’t miss new opportunities.

A final note, I almost missed the delight and joy my children were experiencing on the Christmas eve, for being swept up, resisting the suffering I was experiencing; almost but not quite. I didn’t yet have the skill set to utilize the guidance of my emotions, but intuitively, I did follow an urge to “look up and pay attention to what was right before me eyes”. Their smiles, their laughter, their beautiful shining faces, all these were beaming forth as we ate our humble burritos and took a leisurely walk around Pepper Drive, where 10 blocks of neighbors decorate with lights like no where else around. They didn’t want packages. They wanted my attention. They wanted to share their experience with me. They wanted to walk hand in hand, it was that simple.

Each year this time, I’m thankful that I didn’t miss it. And I’m thankful for every year’s work since I’ve devoted to learning about how to use my emotional guidance system because it allows me to enjoy a holiday with my family that is truly a time of peace, joy and cheer!

I wish you all a day, a week, a month, a new year of what you wish for most for yourself. May you enjoy this time of year and those around you. May your insight and awareness lead to an expanded experience of life. Best wishes, Deborah