I LOVE my job! I enjoy the freedoms of owning my own holistic life coaching practice; in balancing my needs between family and business; the flexibility of managing my own schedule; and I am blessed every day with the opportunities to dream and create! Every day, I get to dream and scheme, laugh and share, heal and help others!  I just love, love, love working with people, my clients—YOU---who have varied and interesting stories to share!

And sometimes I feel like a child with an exciting secret—I get so giddy! One of the greatest things about my job is that YOU teach me something new every single day! Sometimes I feel like I’M the one who really benefits from our sessions! I wonder if my clients really know how happy they make me, how much THEY teach ME, how much sheer delight I get from our sessions, sharing and healing and opening to each other!

Which is why I am kind of scared and kind of nervous to share the following news…

See, here’s the deal…over the past nine months, I have experienced a few major life events—my father was diagnosed and lost his battle with cancer; my daughter moved out of my house and in with her father; and I turned 40! To help me cope with these transitions, I have been seeing a therapist who has charged me with the task of completing a “life timeline.” It is not an easy exercise to do, as it has brought up all sorts of painful memories---and loads of revelations!  

These revelations are causing major energetic shifts for me! I always coach my clients to be gentle on themselves when they undergo such shifts, and I have to treat myself with my own advice. With the amount of shifts I am going through, I need time to fully integrate the changes and space to release all that I no longer wish to carry.

I am not sharing this for sympathy, or any kind of reaction, actually. I am sharing only because it helps to put into context the kinds of things I am meditating on lately…I believe that every experience I have had has prepared me for this crucial moment. I believe I chose to incarnate on this plane, I chose which path my life would take and the experiences I would have. I hold a vision that my experiences are not only for me to learn by, but for others too. I chose to incarnate an Aquarian, the water bearer---sharing information with all of humanity.  

Lately I’m being called to focus my energies on writing my book. I actually have three of them started (THREE!) and I feel compelled at this time to finish them. And so, the best thing about my job is that I get to choose how to spend my time and energies. I have given this considerable thought, but realize that life really is too short. My ideas, my story, won't help anyone if they remain in my head! I must be the Water-bearer, and pour out these stories as if they were water for the thirsty! The mantra of late is loud and clear, "WRITE THE BOOK!"

I do intend to honor my commitments of producing Tele Classes—I have quite a few already planned throughout the year—and I will continue working on my side project, Magickal Harvest, but come March 1, 2013, I will not be accepting client appointments until further notice.  

You wanna' know what else I really LOVE? I LOVE that I am the master of my own destiny! I am elated that I don’t have to do the “daily grind” of the 9-5 office life, under artificial lights, subject to quarterly reviews. I love that I can wake up one day, listen to my heart and know that I have the support of people who get it!

Because I know that while right now seems scary for me to step into, in the end, it will be so worth it!

What would you do if you knew you could not fail?

Failure, in our culture, is the ultimate curse word! To fail is to not meet up to expectations (either your own or others'). It places you lower on the rungs of the ladder to success, ostracizes you as "incapable." We think of failure as a bad thing. We think of it as the most devastating thing that we could ever endure. We think of it as an END to a dream.

…yadda, yadda, yadda…

Well, F@*$ this! I think we have the wrong mindset about “failure.” What if, instead of thinking this way, we thought of failure as an inevitable part of the process to achieving that dream? Instead of it being a matter of devastation, it was simply a wrong turn on this journey?

A few years ago I started an online business, selling vintage collectibles and antiques. I have long been a collector of unusual things that “spoke” to me. Literally, I can feel the stories of old objects and if something felt right, and I liked its story, I would keep it. One day I decided to clear the clutter from my space. Knowing that everything is energy, I felt like transferring my stuff for a different kind of energy—money.

Now, as far as the ins and outs of running an online business-- I had no clue! But I didn’t think it could be that hard. I created my website, I listed a few things at really low prices—once they flew off my shelves, I realized that just maybe the prices were a bit too low.  I bumped up the prices a bit and found they were still flying off the shelves. I began to more thoroughly research what I had and found that things I had been selling could have sold for three times that amount.

Failure? Perhaps some would see it this way. In fact, every time I recount this story, someone inevitably proclaims, “FAIL!” But I prefer to view it differently. This “failure” was really the cost of my education. I have since learned that it pays to perform due diligence and thoroughly research before listing.

In retrospect, once I decided to take action, there was no such thing as failure--only experiences, consequences and results. This is the Principle of Cause and Effect at play. Every action has a reaction. Failure is just one effect.

My point is this: if you are unsure of HOW to get there, don’t sweat it! Once you decide to take action, you have to trust that the Universe conspires to give you what you need at the moment you need it! Trusting that everything happens for a reason develops an inner spirit of un-stop-ability! Trusting in this process allows you to approach everything with a solution-oriented mindset.

Most importantly, learn from it! Don’t let it eat you! Regroup, figure out a plan B and move on! Many people take this initial unmet expectation as a cue to give up and never learn from it. This is where YOU can rise above and shine!

So what if it didn’t go as you expected it to!? So what if you did not meet your deadline, or make the money you wanted? So what, so what, so what?? Ask yourself instead, “What have I learned?” “What can I do differently?” “What is the benefit here?” And most importantly, “What has this taught me about myself?” If you view failure as a learning experience, you soon see that every failure is really a new possibility!

Have a plan, take action, be flexible and learn from it! You can label it whatever you want, but in my experience, failure is just another word for possibility. By choosing to look at it this way, I have grown tremendously! I have also learned that building possibility into my plan of action for achieving my BIG DREAM-- gets me there!

I was rushing the other day to get to our Lughnasadh celebration and it seemed like nothing was going right. I left a basket of food on the counter and didn't realize it until we arrived to the party. So I drove back to the house to get it.  The boys followed me into the house and I asked one of them to carry it out to the car while I checked to make sure I had everything else. He passed it off to his brother, and unbeknownst to me, the basket was left on the porch.

So, we were half way to our destination--again!--when they remembered their mistake. I breathed a deep sigh, turned on the blinker and pulled the car to the side of the road, erupting in a fit of laughter. Both boys looked at me like I was insane, but it helped me to release my frustration!

When things don’t go as we wish, we are often advised to just go with the flow. But for many of us, that is hard to do! In my laughter yoga teacher training, I learned about something that can help. It is the concept of the “inner spirit of laughter.”

The inner spirit of laughter is about so much more than just laughing or just yoga--the inner spirit of laughter is a state of mind that allows one the ability to stay positive when everything seems challenging. It can improve physical health and help to release negative thoughts. From my own experience and from listening to others, I know that negative thoughts can crystalize and take physical form! So, when things don’t go your way, you can either laugh or cry. I have found that laughing is the path of least resistance and offers better outcomes!

As a sales manager, I was in a state of constant worry--I was constantly stressed about money and image and meeting goals and yet, everything that I was afraid of came true. It is no secret that I have met my own extreme challenges in life, including the fact that I lost my job, my house, my car, and my family went through a devastating separation. In the process, my children and I became homeless, living with kind family members. I found myself literally starting over at the bottom with nothing but each other.

After I realized my worst fears, I began to feel extreme guilt. Fear and guilt are two the two most paralyzing emotions anyone can experience because they keep you mired in murky muck, unable to move forward in life. Although I started to rebuild my life, I was still scared and harboring feelings of guilt. I sought a therapist to help me through this time of insecurity.  It was after all of this happened that I found laughter yoga, and it was timely for me, occurring as if on cue. If I had not gone through these extreme challenges, I wouldn’t have taken my training in laughter yoga as seriously as I have.

You see, laughter yoga helped me to re-train myself to laugh for no reason. For me, it was a remembering of who I am. As a child, my nickname was Giggles because I would and could laugh at anything and had a happy-go-lucky attitude of grace (but that is another blog post!) I remembered with laughter yoga that when you find yourself in a challenging situation, if you can laugh openly, for no reason at all, you will trigger your mind to overcome difficult situations more easily.

Laughter yoga goes beyond laughter. It trains your body & mind to respond to challenges in a more productive manner. I remember how, before laughter yoga, I lived in a constant state of lack and scarcity, and because it was the core of my subconscious mind at the time, I actually manifested loss of everything for myself. I am of the belief that your thought forms create your physical reality and it is important to watch what you think about. Laughter yoga has helped me to retrain my mind and body to respond differently to negative thoughts and feelings. My training in laughter yoga has opened up channels for me to express my fears in a productive way, allowing me to face them head on and deal with them, instead of burying them and worrying about them all the time.

The surprise in all of this is that cultivating an inner spirit of laughter helped me to reconnect to my spiritual side.  Yoga is Sanskrit for “to connect,” and in context, means to connect to the Higher Self. When we are connected to our Higher Self, things flow more easily in our lives! But yoga can also connect us to others and build community. When you laugh you raise your own vibration and others pick up on it—it is contagious and infectious and you soon begin to see that the Inner Spirit of Laughter promotes community building. The exercises I teach in a laughing session bring us to that mental state of appreciation because this is the space in which we connect with others, and they are really profound and life changing.

With laughter, I have gone from an attitude based on fear and ego to one of appreciation and gratitude. I find my days starting a little brighter, waking every morning and feeling appreciation for every little thing. The inner spirit of laughter has helped me to recognize the little things that make life a big deal!

Whenever you find yourself in a challenging situation, just laugh! I would LOVE to teach you how!

I was destined for laughter yoga! In fact, my nickname was Giggles when I was a little girl, because I would and could laugh at just about anything! As I got older and faced the responsibilities of adulthood, it seemed I found fewer and fewer reasons to laugh. I had more important things to worry about--mortgage, money, bills, lawn care...you know, life! I found myself repeating mistakes and life's lessons constantly presenting themselves to me. I denied my own inner truth, tried to run from my problems, found myself in toxic relationships, hating my job, dissatisfied with much in life...then I suffered a TIA, i.e. a mini stroke. It was not devastating or life threatening, but it was enough to stop me in my tracks and wake me up to the fact that in my pursuit of "living the dream," I was neglecting the most important thing of all--my health! (For without health, we have nothing!)

As we get older, we tend to lose our child-like wonder and playfulness. As children, we didn’t need permission to laugh. But what happens to us? What hardens our attitudes? Why do we find it so hard to find wonder and joy in the simple pleasures of life? As we get older, we take on responsibility like marriage, jobs, caring for a family, bill paying, mowing the yard, taking out the trash…all these things can add stress to our lives!

Isn’t it funny, though (no pun intended) that most of us maintain a sense of sarcasm in our everyday communication? To many (myself included!) sarcasm can be funny. But did you know sarcasm is rooted in anger?
I believe sarcasm is a mask we wear in order to protect the ego. When the ego is engaged, we care too much about how others perceive us. Sarcasm allows us to express pent up rage in a “safe” manner—we are not directly “attacking” anyone, we get to express ourselves and we elicit a laugh from others (albeit, most usually a nervous, timid laugh...) And this is okay, to an extent. But when it becomes so common that sarcasm is part of your personality, the use of sarcasm can be detrimental to your emotional wellbeing.

What we need to do is shed the mask, let go of ego and laugh for no reason! Not everyone is comfortable with laughing for no reason. Many of us need to watch a comedian or a funny movie or listen to a joke in order to make us laugh. To combat this hurdle, here’s a trick you can do…give yourself permission to laugh. And then, just do it! And remember, laughing for no reason is a skill that gets better with practice.

Fortunately for me, and through a strange cosmic synchronicity, I found laughter yoga shortly after my TIA experience. It was the answer to my hardened attitude and today, I laugh-- ALOT! With practice, laughing for no reason becomes natural (and the benefits to your health are amazing! But that is another topic for another blog post!)  

If you would like to incorporate more laughter into your life, join me in January as I will be providing one-on-one laughter yoga coaching.

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