Wed 3/10

By Gwen

Tues 3/9

By Gwen

THE DOMESTICATION OF HUMANS

By Gwen

“Children are domesticated the same way that we domesticate a dog, a cat, or any other animal.  In order to teach a dog we punish the dog and we give it rewards. We train our children whom we love so much the same way that we train any domesticated animal: with a system of punishment and reward. We are told, ‘You’re a good boy,’ or ‘You’re a good girl,’ when we do what Mom and Dad want us to do. When we don’t, we are a ‘bad girl’ or a ‘bad boy.’”

                                                                                                                                                              ~ Don Miguel Ruiz

The Four Agreements

Ah, the domestication process.

Carlos Castaneda,  a great teacher who introduces us to the ancient Toltec wisdom (see Notes on The Wheel of Time), tells us that the purpose of the warrior (the ideal person in the Toltec tradition) is to transcend social conditioning as we discover our personal power and learn to live with clear intent and impeccability.

The Four Agreements are pretty much an awesome guide on how to do exactly that!

Brian Johnson

Philosophers Notes

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Nothing is more powerful than “watching” how the mind works of a small child.  My granddaughter, Hannah, is a perfect example.  Now that I have some understanding of how the conscious and subconscious mind works, how powerfully our childhood programming either helps or hinders our adult years… consciously or subconsciously!  (Trust me, I’ve spent many, many years working on the process of transcending my own social conditioning!)  Hannah is now 2 and a half and I’m so grateful for the opportunities that I’ve had to spend time with her, which in turn, gives me a much better understanding of the challenges my clients face and how deeply they are rooted. 

However, the good news is, grandma’s got some GREAT tools!

Gwen

Ask and It Is Given: The Law of Attraction

By Gwen

THE LAW OF ATTRACTION

“Every thought vibrates, every thought radiates a signal, and every thought attracts a matching signal back. We call that process the Law of Attraction. The Law of Attraction says: That which is like unto itself is drawn. And so, you might see the powerful Law of Attraction as a sort of Universal Manager that sees to it that all thoughts that match one another line up.”

“It is our desire that you become one who is happy with that

which you are and with that which you have—while at the

same time being eager for more. That is the optimal

creative vantage point: To stand on the brink of what

 is coming, feeling eager, optimistic anticipation—with no

feelings of impatience, doubt, or unworthiness hindering

the receiving of it—that is the Science of

Deliberate Creation at its best.”

~ Esther and Jerry Hicks

That’s the best definition of The Law of Attraction I’ve read.

(Like I said, this book is pretty much The Bible for The Law of Attraction.

In the book, Esther and Jerry compare The Law of Attraction to tuning a radio. You want to listen to something on 102.7FM? You don’t expect to hear it if your radio’s set to 98.7 do you? Of course not. The radio waves of one frequency can only be received by a matching tuner, right?

Same thing in the “real” world.

If you want to receive love and abundance in your life, you need to set your tuner to the same vibrational frequency as love and abundance, no?

To put it bluntly: If you’re a jerk, do you expect to receive an overwhelming abundance of love in your life? It’s IMPOSSIBLE. You’re putting out all kinds of “jerk” energy and that’s pretty much what you’ll get back.

I would definitely agree. So pick your radio station consciously (love songs, perhaps , and make sure you’ve got yourself tuned in to hear the wonderful music.

The Art of Perfect Timing. Follow Your Internal Clock.

By Gwen

Most “timing is perfect!” enthusiasts don’t need these kinds of tests. They’re constantly aware of their internal timekeepers, respecting information and intimations, preparing to avoid danger or pursue opportunity. By contrast, people who bewail their bad timing often ignore, even actively reject, facts and premonitions that could help them better plan their actions. True, everyone is subject to good and bad events. But the laws of probability mean that extreme strokes of fortune, positive or negative, occur rarely and end quickly. If you ask people how they make decisions, “lucky” people will talk about tuning in to information and instincts, while “unlucky” people often mention pushing away the uncomfortable feeling they were headed for trouble.

So how do you tune in to your timekeeping impulses? Ironically, the only way to access your inner guide about the future is to fully occupy the present. By noticing everything you’re feeling—physically, emotionally, and intuitively—in any given moment, you maximize your awareness of the “exquisitely refined” nonverbal timekeeper nudging your noggin.

These are the strategies I’ve found most effective at keeping me in the right place at the right time:

1. Take a relaxed breath and exhale fully. Before inhaling again, rest in the pause between breaths. Focus on your heartbeat and the pulse in your hands, feet, and scalp. As you return to breathing normally, remain aware of your pulse throughout your body. This anchors you in the present and keeps you calm during the next steps.

2. Acknowledge that you can’t change anything that’s already happened. Sometimes that’s a shame, but it’s just plain true.

3. Accept that many things about the future are unknowable and beyond your control. Scary? Oh, yes—but again: true.

4. Recognize whatever’s happening right now (you’d be amazed how often we try to deny what’s going on). If the present is miserable, this step can hurt—but not nearly as much as living with the consequences of denial.

5. Pull an Eckhart Tolle: Shrink the focus of your attention to this present moment. Are you going through a divorce, bankruptcy, or similarly difficult experience? Maybe—but right now, you’re just reading this. Be here now. When you plan, plan here now. Don’t preemptively grapple with circumstances that don’t yet exist. Living this moment in peace, tuned in to your inner timekeeper, will lay the groundwork for the best possible future.

6. Go back to sensing your pulse throughout your body (this returns you to a peaceful place if you’ve been unsettled), and ask yourself what you feel you should do about each situation in your life. As you begin articulating what you know or suspect about the right course of action, your body will relax. Even if things look scary, accepting the truth brings peace.

7. Follow through on any ideas you’ve had about preparing for your optimal future.

8. Stay alert to new hunches, and change plans accordingly.

–Martha Beck

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The tools that Martha Beck lists here are some of the most simple, yet most powerful I’ve found.  Anytime that I’ve let life get the best of me, begin to feel overwhelmed or that I haven’t accomplished the huge number of things on my mental “to do” list and feel that my “control” is furiously slipping away… I try to remember to stop and take a breathe.   I often repeat a phrase that I learned in counseling, “it is what it is.”  That helps me to remember that I can’t change anything that’s already happened, no matter how very much I wish I could.  And I try to remember to bring myself back to this moment.  What am I doing right now? What am I thinking about right now?  Is it about everything that I anticipate that will happen over the next month – which isn’t here yet, or more than likely everything that has happened in the past – which is already gone.  Then I repeat the quote_______________________

Letting Go. . .

By Gwen

The concept of letting go is far easier to talk about than to execute. Many [current] six-figure women admitted remaining in unfavorable situations, some holding tighter or dangling longer than others. And when they eventually did let go, it wasn’t without second thoughts or stabs of doubt.

It took management consultant Carol Anderson two years to dissolve a business relationship even though it was not healthy. “Those were the worst years I ever had financially. I didn’t have a single client in sight, only four thousand dollars in the bank, and no idea what I’d do next,” she said.

Finally, when she screwed up the courage to leave the situation, she got a call “out of the blue” from a colleague, which resulted in a slew of business. She marks her financial success from the moment she stopped doing something that wasn’t good for her and trusted her resourcefulness to figure out what to do next. “I believe that life works when you’re true to yourself and it doesn’t when you’re not. But I have to keep reminding myself of that all the time.”

Amazing coincidences so often occur as soon as people let go. There’s a perfectly valid explanation. While “intention” is a magnet that attracts what we want, “letting go” provides the space for our desire to manifest.

Barbara Stanny

Secrets of 6 Figure Women

“D” stands for Dharma

By Gwen

“D” stands for the law of demand and supply.  Whatever service we are here to give, there is a demand for it.  Ask yoruself  ”How may I serve?” and “How can I help?”  The answers are within you. When you find those answers, you will also see and know that there is a demand for your service.

“D” also stands for dharma. Each of us has a dharma, a purpose in life. When we are in dharma, we enjoy and love our work.

Deepak Chopra

Creating Affluence

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My gratitude goes out to Deepak Chopra.  It was in his book, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams where I originally found the definition of dharma, for which my business was founded.   His book Creating Affluence: The A-Z Steps to a Richer Life was given to me by my first real estate client, a friend, over 10 years ago.  I completely appreciate the lessons that I’ve gained from having Deepak in my life!

Gwen

Menopause an ENCORE Career?

By Gwen

Putting Menopause Center Stage

Jeanie Linders wrote a musical about hot  flashes that took America by storm.  She’s using the profits to help other women.

Jeanie’s Lesson:  No matter how many people tell you no, if you have an idea you believe in, keep going.  And never look down the road too far.  Instead, make sure what you’re doing today is important.

“It’s taken over my life,” Jeanie Linders says, laughing.  Did this former Florida-based ad agency owner have any inkling that the lyrics she wrote poking fun at hot flashes would generate a theatrical empire?  “Not a clue.”  Yet now, four years after it opened on a small stage in central Florida, more than a hundred thousand people — mostly women in their 40’s and 50’s — are seeing Menopause The Musical every month, worldwide.  And it’s changed women’s lives on both sides of the footlights.

It all started one evening ten years ago when Jeanie was about to attend an NAACP ball in Orlando.  “There I was in my gown, ready to leave, when I had a ferocious hot flash.  I was standing in front of the refrigerator, fanning myself with both doors, singing Rod Stewart’s “Hot Legs,” only I was singing “hot flashes.”  Though she’d never written a play, the idea of creating a musical based on menopause just clicked.  Jeanie pinned cards listing menopause symptoms on a bulletin board, bought a pawnshop record player for $10, got out her old 45’s and started writing new lyrics for old favorites.  “Chain, Chain, Chain. Chain of Fools: became “Change, Change, Change. Change of Life.”  “Staying Alive” became an insomnia lament, “Staying Awake.”  “I would email the lyrics to friends, and they’d write back, “That’s funny, send more.”"  When she had enough material, she sent her play, featuring four women shopping at Bloomingdale’s and singing about hot flashes, mood swings, and weight gain, to a theatrical lawyer, who told her that nobody would produce it.

But she couldn’t let go of the idea.  “I just knew it would work,” she says, and so she produced the play herself.  It opened on March 28, 2001, in a 76 seat theatre she built in a former Orlando perfume shop.  “The actors had to climb thorough a hole in the wall to their dressing rooms in the show store next door.”  The show is lovably dorky, with the four actors wearing goofy outfits and doing 1970’s disco moves; critics sneered but audiences ate it up. Women flocked to the show, they brought their friends, and everybody howled.  The musical moved to West Palm Beach, then opened off-Broadway, where it’s still running 3 years later.  The cast members are all over forty, all over size 10. This brand of reality theater really strikes a chord with midlife women.  “Walk down any street in America and you will not find four desperate housewives who look like those women on TV,” Jeanie notes.  “Hollywood says you’re young, you’re thin, you’re hip.  My audience is not.  I always say, there are five girlfriends at the show — four on stage and one in the audience.  If she gets up and dances at the end, we’ve done our job.”

Jeanie receives a constant flow of emails from women thanking her for taking menopause out of the closet.  “Most of our parents went through the change, retired from their jobs, had grandkids, and waited to die.  It’s not like they started whole new lives.”  Not so for us boomers.  “Our generation had a president killed, a war in which the guys we were engaged to were dying, our parents were divorcing — all of a sudden, things were upside down.  With nothing to hold on to, we’ve been reinventing our lives all along.

“Menopause is not just a physical change,” she continues, “Not only can we not longer reproduce, but our parents are passing away and suddenly there’s this reality that we’re not going to live forever.  What happens then is that all the people we’ve paid attention to our whole lives — husbands, children, bosses — take a backseat.  Our inner voice is saying, Excuse me, it’s my turn.”

As she rode the crest of seemingly unstoppable success, and her ad agency morphed into a single-show theater production company, Jeanie’s inner voice told her to take thte money and do some good. She launched a nonprofit called Women For Women Foundation that makes grants to women over forty.  W4W provides mentoring and financial support to women’s service organizations, grants scholarships in the arts, and serves as a clearing house for information on issues that affect women at midlife.  She’s also launched the If Only Award.  “I call it the Make a Wish Foundation for living women with dying dreams.” Jeanie says.  “This is not, ‘I want to meet Brad Pitt,’”  These wishes are the stuff of life reinvention — going back to school, starting businesses, seeing the world.

Jeanie may have a soft spot for struggling women because she’s known failure herself.  “In 1986, I tanked totally,” she says, with typical candor.  “It rained and nobody came to a jazz festival I created.”  She was on the line financially, and when she lost her business, she lost her identity, too.  Suddenly, she was not loner “Jeanie Ad Agency”‘ as just plain Jeanie Linders, “I spent 5 years trying to figure out who the hell that was.”  She had produced events her whole life, from a fine arts mall in a derelict shopping center to multistage music festivals.  “I’ve done all these bizarre things — worked for Michael Jackson, ran Francis Ford Coppola’s resort in Belize, taught high school in Jamaica.”  But now she wanted to do work that was truly meaningful.

 When she saw three hundred women in an off-Broadway theater standing and clapping, shouting, “That’s me, that’s me,” she knew she’d found the vehicle to change people’s lives.  She’ s grown her company by extending opportunities to the women around her.  “At first, I was running this whole production out of my back bedroom,” she says.  “the phone would ring at two in the morning with people reserving tickets.  Menopausal women don’t sleep.”  Now she has twenty people working at an office in Orlando, and additional staffers in each of the thirteen cities with long-running productions.  One is her former cleaning lady.  “She’s my production manager and she’s fabulous.  She just needed that hand up.”  Another is a friend of 25 years, who advised Jeanie to forget about producing this show.  “She’s now my advertising director,” Jeanie says.

Getting rich isn’t the plan; adding richness to life is.  “Somebody wrote a newspaper article saying that Jeanie Linders is making a mint.  That’s not true.  I finance all my own shows, and when we make enough money, we open in another city.  Souvenir sales benefit the foundation.”  Jeanie, who is single, adds, “I can only spend so much money. For the first 50 years of my life, I lived on $35,000 a year.”

When she went through those tough times, her friends told her, “You’re a survivor, you’ll make it.” And despite raging arthritis that has already meant multiple operations, including two knee replacements, Jeanie is optimistic.  “Sometimes I feel like C-3PO.  But no matter how much metal they put in your body, you have to choose life.  When I was sixteen, I wrote Jeanie’s Beatitude:  Cursed are they who live to exist but fail to live while existing.  I never want to just take up space.”

Where will she be in five years?  “No idea,” Jeanie, who’s now fifty-six , says.  “I never look down the road that far.  My biggest concerns are taking care of my employees, and getting the show in front of as many women as I can.”

 Susan Crandell

Thinking About Tomorrow:

Reinventing Yourself at Midlife

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This story helps me to remember that we all have our own unique dharma and our own unique ways of bringing our dharma to the world, while being touched and inspired at the same time every time I read it!  Are you interested in discovering what’ wonderful gift is laying dormant inside of you?  Contact me, I’d LOVE to help you find it!

Gwen

Self-Confidence Formula

By Gwen

WHAT’S YOUR HAPPINESS SET-POINT?

By Gwen

“Researchers have found that no matter what happens to you in life, you tend to return to a fixed range of happiness. Like your weight set-point, which keeps the scale hovering around the same number, your happiness set-point will remain the same unless you make a concerted effort to change it.”

Did you know we all have a happiness set-point? Fascinating stuff that researchers are discovering.  As Marci says: “In fact, there was a famous study conducted that tracked people who’d won the lottery—what many people think of as the ticket to the magic kingdom of joy. Within a year, these lucky winners returned to approximately the same level of happiness they’d experienced before their windfall. Surprisingly, the same was true for people who became paraplegic. Within a year or so of being disabled, they also returned to their original happiness level.”

You can think of your set-point like a thermostat. If it gets a little warmer in your house (i.e., you get a little happier!) the thermostat will bring your house/you down to the set-point. And, if it gets a little too cold, it’ll bring you up.  Researchers posit that 50% of our set-point comes from genetics while 10% is determined by our circumstances (like our job, marital status, wealth). “The other 40 percent is determined by our habitual thoughts, feelings, words and actions. This is why it’s possible to raise your happiness set-point. In the same way you’d crank up the thermostat to get comfortable on a chilly day, you actually have the power to re-program your happiness set-point to a higher level of peace and well-being.”

So, the good news is we can change our happiness levels. Of course, that doesn’t (usually) happen with a snap of our fingers. It takes diligent, patient and persistent practice.

Marci Shimoff

Happy for No Reason

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So, do you believe that our happiness set point is really 50%  ”genetic” so we have very little control of it at all?  Or do you believe it could be that because we were raised by a certain family, in a certain environment our subconscious mind was “programmed” to control our happiness thermostat?   What if….  (Get your FREE report on my website “What is a Limiting Belief & how is it preventing me from living my life purpose?”)   Perhaps you can reprogram your mind to be happy regardless of what you were programmed to believe as a child.

Gwen