Posts tagged with ‘change’

Important Message from Ariane

Dear Friends and Fellow Change Optimists,

After two incredible years of sending out hundreds of thousands of Change Secrets emails every day, I’ve decided it’s time for a change and will stop our daily correspondence. All great things come to an end and something new follows. “From this change, something good will come,” as by now, you all know The Change Guarantee. There are many reasons for why I made this decision. Among them are these:

Some of you have shared with me that sometimes it’s too much to receive and read an email daily.

It’s a lot to think about, hard to find time to listen to an interview, and so on.

Others have said sometimes the topic isn’t relevant to them so they delete it. Still others have different reasons. I respect them all.

My personal reason is that I’ve been working on some new teachings, a new book and would like to commit to the call of my heart’s inspiration. I am feeling guided to dive deeper into the spiritual path, write about that and eventually speak and teach about what I’ve personally learned.

As a sneak peak, I will unveil a new site dedicated to any of you who are on a spiritual path and want to follow that journey. Please also let others know who are looking for a group of people with what I affectionately call, “A Foot in Both Worlds.” You can go to www.arianestudio.com and sign up for when we do launch later this summer.

If you’re wondering what will happen with the daily email on First30Days, here’s the answer. On July 1st we will stop the daily emails and continue to have more of a newsletter type of connection with all of you who want that. We won’t contact you regularly once-a-week, only when we feel there is some fantastic new content, blog posts from our experts, an inspiring story, an article everyone must know about or an event I may be attending or hosting.

If you dont want to continue to receive any mailings from us, this is a good time to say goodbye and we wish you well.
(You may click here to unsubsribe now.)

Of course, the www.first30days.com site will continue to be a place of support, inspiration, information as well as a community for anyone going through a change. We’ll offer new content, experts and resources.

Blessings and gratitude for what we’ve all been through together,
Ariane

Posted by Ariane de Bonvoisin on May 31st, 2010 in Ariane, General, New Directions | 10 comments Read related posts in change

Although Change Is a Fact of Life, It Is Easy to Get Stuck in the Muck

Life is about constant change. Sometimes we simply get tired of learning and changing and feel more comfortable staying where we are. This is why it is understandable that people get stuck. It happens to everyone at some point in his or her life.

If you feel stuck in some area of your life, be it relationships, career or health, start by clearing your environment of unnecessary objects. This is an easy place to begin. It might seem insurmountable, but the good news is that all you really need to do is start. And if you have tried and failed to clear your life of clutter, hire a professional. In a short time, a professional can help you move the papers, set up sustainable systems or do whatever else is needed so that you can gain confidence and a new feeling of mastery of your environment.

Meanwhile, you will have begun to remove blocks that were holding you back from a lot more than just a clean shelf. You do not have to excel in every area of your life. In fact, it is not possible. It is not in our DNA to be great at everything. Thank goodness or this would truly be a boring and one-dimensional world. It’s not a tragedy if you can’t figure out how to keep the paper piles at bay or get on top of whatever else is mucking up your life. You are probably great in other areas of your life.

Everyone needs help moving through personal blocks at one time or another. The most successful people in life realize this and quickly hire others to assist them when they reach a personal or career standstill. Masters always hire other masters so don’t feel like you have to move through every life change alone.

If you felt moved, inspired, touched, helped, annoyed, or anything after reading this, please let us know. Our wonderful bloggers really do appreciate your comments and feedback. It’s super easy and takes a minute. Click on comments below.

Posted by Kathi Burns on May 28th, 2010 in Career, General, New Directions, Uncategorized | No comments Read related posts in Career, change, muck, professionals, stuck, unstuck

It Pays to Write the Path to Your Goal

Recently I discussed the power or thoughts as you begin to reach for new goals. I would now like to address the power of words and how they provide a great deal of renewable energy to help us create whatever we desire.

After you have seen your new goal and its end result clearly in your mind, take the time to write it down.

Lay out your vision step-by-step in your mind and write all that you see on a piece of paper. When you write down the path to your goal, keep it simple but add as many details as you see.

If you are one of those people who don’t bother writing their goals because they always fail, realize this: those people who do write their goals on paper will actually accomplish some, if not all of them. I have a friend from South Africa who always has a list of 10 goals in writing at any given time. This is what he wrote to me about his life:

“When I was young, I figured out my life somehow played out in cycles of seven years. I decided then to create a plan to include 10 definitive objectives that would manifest into tangible goals that I could achieve within each seven-year period. If I didn’t reach some goals, it was okay because they rolled over into the next period. So, in essence, I had this ferris wheel of hope and desire that always seemed full of ideas. The tools to accomplish this was the key… I had immediate and weekly goals that served my monthly goals, which in turn made my seven-year plan reachable. ‘Start small but visualize big’ is my motto I suppose.”

A few of the goals Kevin has accomplished to date includes getting his green card without an attorney and, against all odds, after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, taking a camping holiday through Europe, hiking the Grand Canyon (which he has now done three times) and meeting his childhood hero, Mohammed Ali, in person by simply knocking on his door.

It helps to surround yourself with visionaries. Their ability to reach their own lofty goals affirms that you can do the same. The largest successes in the world often begin with thoughts, which turn into words and then manifest through actions.

Next up, how to turn your thoughts and words into appropriate action!

This is an excerpt from Kathi’s book How to Master Your Muck ~ Get Organized. Add Space To Your Life. Live Your Purpose!

If you felt moved, inspired, touched, helped, annoyed, or anything after reading this, please let us know. Our wonderful bloggers really do appreciate your comments and feedback. It’s super easy and takes a minute. Click on comments below.

Posted by Kathi Burns on May 20th, 2010 in General, Global/Social Change, New Directions, Spirituality | No comments Read related posts in change, Manifesting, Reality, Words

Finding Ground in Mid-Change

How many of you remember that old commercial in the late 70’s/early 80’s:

“How many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie-roll pop?”

If I had a dollar for every time my mind had that kind of thought around my growth process, I’d be sitting on some huge cash reserves! I don’t know about you, but for me, and most of the clients I’ve worked with, future growth can’t be calculated or measured like that. Usually when my mind is asking for something like that, it’s really looking for some kind of certainty, some sense of solid ground on which to feel safe.

Recently I’ve been looking and feeling deeper than ever into some of the core layers of ego inside of me; layers that can actively distort my thoughts and emotions about nearly anything if I’m not vigilant. These are the layers of what some spiritual teachers call “inner division” – they create a feeling of being separate from the sense of well-being most people would say that strive to get to. They create a feeling of being separated from love essentially. Getting more specific, I’d call it self-love.

This afternoon while I was speaking with my friend and mentor, David Elliott, about his new book “Healing”, I was talking about my experience of working with the first exercise in the book – “Write down all the ways you love yourself.”

I told David that generally my list starts with activities, things I’ve done to or for myself that would seem loving. Yet my real sense of self-love is that it’s not based in actions, but is most definitely reflected in actions. If I do not love myself while taking a shower, it’s just a mechanical act. If I consciously actively love myself while showering, it’s a whole other experience that leaves me feeling expansive, refreshed, and full of joy.

It’s a feeling that I’m learning to cultivate and sense regardless of what I’m doing, or what’s happening around me. If my love for me is dependent on any particular set of circumstances, my love will be absent without those situations. If my willingness to move into flow and expansion is tied to what can be given to me, it can just as easily be taken away.

So far this might be sounding a little hard to wrap your head around and turn into practices that’ll abundantly reveal self-love.

For me some form of meditative practice is essential for revealing and experiencing the feeling of this love. At the moment, it’s a daily practice of sitting two times a day, once in the morning and once later in the day for a minimum of about 23 minutes. 23 minutes hasn’t got any special significance that I know of, it just happens to be the length of the CD track I’m using for meditation. Several times a week, I also practice the breathwork that I teach. Both of these constitute meditation practices that quiet my mind and open me to experiencing profound expansion, relaxation, and moments of no thoughts of any kind. There’s a palpable “Presence” that moves through my body like a buzz or humming feeling, the sense of feeling spaciousness in my cells, and an ease in my breath.

It’s also crucial for me to get some form of exercise daily. I need a combination of working with weights (which help me feel strong, grounded, and solid in my body) and cardio (which also gets my breath moving deeply and into a rhythm – excellent on the days I haven’t practiced the breathwork).

Then throughout the day, when any thought arises that carries or stimulates some form of tension or negative emotion, I’ve learned to question the truth of the thought. The best-selling author Byron Katie teaches that any thought that creates suffering indicates an argument with reality and a belief in something that isn’t true. The way to release the stuck emotion is to show myself the truth by asking myself good questions.

One of my favorite questions is “Can I know this is the absolute Truth for certain?”

And finally, keeping all the spaces I occupy clean. That goes all the way from physically cleaning and organizing my home, office, and car to maintaining the ecology of my relationships. I have a practice of regularly scrolling through the contacts in my iPhone and noticing my thoughts and body sensations. If my stomach clenches when I look at a name, I know I’ve got some work to do. And doing this work always gives me more space to breathe. It may mean questioning my beliefs or thoughts about the person, or it may mean picking up the phone and finding out if there’s an amends I need to make.

All these practices are scalable, meaning they’re to be experimented with, tried out over time, and adapted to the situations. By no means is this the end of the road on practices either. Essentially I look for practices to cover the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual…all of me.

I also check in to make sure I’m having some fun. This is a muscle I know I need to keep focused on building. If I’m not careful I can start to get a little too serious, and it’s only a few steps from seriousness to heaviness.

While excavating the Truth within, or even just navigating what’s real in a relationship, things can appear distorted and the process can feel incredibly destabilizing. It continues to be priceless for me to get more comfortable being uncomfortable, to find the solid ground I’ve been looking for within myself, where no person or circumstance can take it away. It’s a knowing.

All the things I listed above are activities that help me feel clear and awake so I can actively perceive the solid ground within. Find your own, experiment, and do something long enough to see results. Then use the results to refine your experimentation. And have some fun along the way.

If you felt moved, inspired, touched, helped, annoyed, or anything after reading this, please let us know. Our wonderful bloggers really do appreciate your comments and feedback. It’s super easy and takes a minute. Click on comments below.

Posted by Scott Schwenk on May 20th, 2010 in Uncategorized | No comments Read related posts in BREATHWORK, change, FRIENDSHIP, Relationships, self love, TELLING THE TRUTH, TRANSFORMATION

What Are You Waiting For?

“I’ll start going to the gym next month.”

“I’ll stop drinking after I get back from vacation.”

“I’ll call my parents on the weekend.”

“I’ll eat better next week, after this project at work is over.”

“I should really spend more time with the kids.”

So many of us talk about great things we should do, or things we should stop doing, then find some reason to put it off. I had a friend who would wait until the first day of the next month to start something new or to end a bad habit, regardless of the current day. Why wait? If it is important enough to do, start today.

As I travel and speak about connecting to your talents and passions, I constantly hear stories of people who live lives of regret. As we talk about discovering or rediscovering their talents and passions, many people tell me they kept their passions hidden, waiting for the right time. They wished they had developed their love of music, art, travel, reading, quilting, parenting…whatever. They sadly remember how happy they were doing something that activated them, but never made more time for it. And now, they feel they have missed out.

My eldest daughter gets married this week. I have written several times in this blog about this because you always write about what you feel, and seeing your first child get married is an amazingly emotional event. But more important is the realization of how quickly time goes by. I have spent time this week looking at the pictures of her life – as she moved through each stage. And I remember thinking many times in her life that this moment will not return – I have to be here, right now, to be part of it. Don’t wait. Don’t miss it.

And though these childhood moments have passed, I remember being part of them. I’m glad I made time for them. Even when work and a divorce took me away, I remember changing things to be there, to be present, and to be part of her life. And as I walk her down the aisle, I will remember all of these times. I will look back loving each moment of being her father, and will have no regrets.

So start now with the important things in your life. Don’t wait. What are the things you must do – to stay healthy, stay connected, live better, live more authentically, say what you feel, love what you do…. What are the things you must stop doing – eating the wrong foods, drinking too much, smoking, not exercising, working too much, fighting with others… How will you take ownership and invent your best life?

Here are some suggestions:

• Identify one thing you love to do, and do it today.
• Identify one person who needs to hear from you, and call, text, e-mail, write or visit today.
• Say something loving and supporting to a child, spouse, sibling or friend today.
• Identify one bad or unhealthy habit you have and end it today.
• Identify a good new habit and start it today.
• Identify one thing you will do to help the planet (stop using bottled water, drive less, recycle everything you can recycle, don’t litter, walk more, etc.) today.
• Identify a need your community has and volunteer for it today.
• Surprise someone with a compliment, smile or hug today.
• Create your life’s bucket list of things to do and places to see, today.
• Identify one thing that will bring your family closer, and do it today.
• Identify one thing you will do to get better and become more valuable in your job, and do it today.
• Identify one thing you will do to stay in better control of your finances, and do it today.
• Identify one thing you will do to become more connected to your spirituality and beliefs, and do it today.
• Identify one thing that you have always wanted to do, and find out about it, or do it, today.

Your life is as you make it. Your choices and actions determine its level of success, energy, passion and happiness. When you take ownership, not only do you improve your life, but you also inspire others to do the same. When you take ownership, you will look back, proud of your choices, and have no regrets.

There always seems to be a logical reason to put off what you need to do – not enough money, time, resources, energy, support, or something. Yet time goes by, day after day; you don’t get this time back. And soon large blocks of time have passed without making important changes, or living your passions and dreams. Know what makes you happy, healthy and wise – and do more of it. If it is important enough to do, then it is important enough to do today. Don’t wait.

Jay Forte is a motivational speaker and performance consultant. He works to connect people to their talents and passions to work strong and live stronger. He is the author of Fire Up! Your Employees and Smoke Your Competition, and the on-line resources, Stand Out and Get Hired, and The Hunt for Opportunities Success Manual. He has just completed his new book, The End of Average; Know Yourself, Find Your Fit and Transform Your World; chapter downloads will soon be available on his website. More information at www.LiveFiredUp.com.

If you felt moved, inspired, touched, helped, annoyed, or anything after reading this, please let us know. Our wonderful bloggers really do appreciate your comments and feedback. It’s super easy and takes a minute. Click on comments below.

Posted by Jay Forte on May 15th, 2010 in Career, Diet and Fitness, Family, Finances, Health, New Directions, Personal Stories, Relationships, Spirituality, Things We Love | No comments Read related posts in be present, change, don't wait, lives great events, own your life, show up

Life Is Erotic

I want to do to you what Spring does with cherry trees. ~ Neruda

::

I’ve been contemplating Neruda for days now. Discovering this one simple quote, above, led me to this poem of his. And I melted. Oh, my, what this poem exudes.

::

I posted a few lines:

Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.

A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.

on Facebook and Twitter, and what came back was rapturous delight from women. Gasps. Oohs. Aahs.

I didn’t receive pithy statements about the beauty of the lines, but rather short exclamations of feeling.

Feeling. Something wakes up in us when we experience these words.

::

Life is erotic. Life re-creates itself, over and over. Life is an impulse, a continual impulse to come into existence. Life is birthing itself in every moment.

“What does God do all day long? God gives birth. From all eternity God lies on a maternity bed giving birth.” Meister Eckhart

::

Most of the lessons we’ve internalized about ‘what Spring does to cherry trees’ isn’t about life or God or ooh and ahh. Think of a nice big fat cherry pie. What we’ve been taught to believe is like taking that cherry pie and cutting the tiniest sliver out of it, then serving it up as the whole pie. The slice is so small, it can’t even stand on its own. And it doesn’t even taste like cherry pie anymore.

::

Pleasure, Eros, Sensuality, Sexuality. These themes are woven into Neruda’s works, but he speaks of life, of earth, of people, of longing, of creation, of love.

And in these lines, he wraps the oh-so-humble elements of this human earthly existence in robes of divinity:

Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.

Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

We are sensual beings. We live in one big erotic field. Life is pulsing through our veins. Life throbs. Life longs.

In spring, we are in the outward, pulsating part of the cycle of life. Just as in the cherry tree, we feel this pulsing, this desire, this longing to create.

It’s actually really practical, too. When your creations and actions flow from this inner impulse, they come from the intelligence that is life. They are vibrantly alive and captivatingly juicy.

This impulse is a guide to truth and integrity. It is a guide to aliveness and to joy. It is a guide to feeling all of what life offers, even those feelings we’ve pushed away for so long. It is a guide to pleasure and the land of the unknown.

I could feel this in the women who responded with alive oohs and aahs. Our power lies in our bodies, in waking up to and living in the divinity that breathes fire into each and every female cell.

Do I dare live, love and create from this place? Do you? Do we?

Image by Cliff1066 under CC3.0

Julie Daley is a coach, creativity catalyst and consultant. She works with women who ache to come home to themselves, and want to live from the truth they discover when they do. Find out more at UnabashedlyFemale.com.

If you felt moved, inspired, touched, helped, annoyed, or anything after reading this, please let us know. Our wonderful bloggers really do appreciate your comments and feedback. It’s super easy and takes a minute. Click on comments below.

Posted by Julie Daley on April 22nd, 2010 in Spirituality | No comments Read related posts in change, creativity, Meister Eckhart, Pablo Neruda, women

The clothes you wear can sabotage or support what you want to create in your life.

I agree with Nick Arrojo’s comments on February 18th about the subtle effects on your life regarding how you present yourself to the world.

Your image is created by your thoughts and feelings about yourself. If you have never taken the time to pause and figure out how you feel about yourself and how you want to be viewed by the world, it will be reflected in your wardrobe. The clothes you wear can sabotage or support what you want to create in your life.

Clothes not only reflect how we feel about ourselves, they also impact how others react to us. Whether you are a man or a woman, you are judged by the clothes that you wear. This is a reality. The power of a first impression is real and not disappearing anytime soon. This might seem cruel and unreasonable until you realize why this happens.

We don’t make quick character judgments because we are malicious. We do it because it is one of our most primal instincts, self-protection. We are programmed to determine as quickly as possible whether the person next to us is trustworthy, or if we should take a flight-or-fight stance. We simply rely on visual clues to determine whether we are safe.

During this instinctive process, we can’t help but make other judgments about professionalism, financial status and personality. Knowing this, it makes sense that we should try to appear as polished as possible. It is not a secret that a successful and positive personal image is a direct result of the clothes we wear.

Creating a successful image goes a lot deeper than outward appearances. Clothes change the way we view ourselves. Think about your wardrobe for a minute. Almost everyone has a lucky piece of clothing. When we wear that item our attitude throughout the day is more self-assured. That is why we really enjoy wearing our “lucky” outfits. We feel happier and more successful. With the proper elements in your wardrobe, you will feel empowered every day as you get dressed and head out into the world.

This is an excerpt from Kathi’s book, How to Master Your Muck.

If you felt moved, inspired, touched, helped, annoyed, or anything after reading this, please let us know. Our wonderful bloggers really do appreciate your comments and feedback. It’s super easy and takes a minute. Click on comments below.

Posted by Kathi Burns on March 2nd, 2010 in Career, General, New Directions, Things We Love, Uncategorized | 2 comments Read related posts in body image, change, clothes, image, Nick Arrojo, power, success, wardrobe

Life Lessons from Charlie Chaplin

A friend of mine, Kerstin, sent this to me. It’s the speech that Charlie Chaplin gave on his 70th birthday. I found it beautiful and ever so true.

As I Began to Love Myself

As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering
are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth.
Today, I know, this is “AUTHENTICITY.”
As I began to love myself I understood how much it can offend somebody
As I try to force my desires on this person,
even though I knew the time was not right and the person was not ready for it,
and even though this person was me.
Today I call it “RESPECT.”
As I began to love myself I stopped craving for a different life,
and I could see that everything that surrounded me was inviting me to grow.
Today I call it “Maturity,”
As I began to love myself I understood that at any circumstance,
I am in the right place at the right time,
and everything happens at the exactly right moment.
So I could be calm.
Today I call it “SELF-CONFIDENCE.”
As I began to love myself I quit stealing my own time,
and I stopped designing huge projects for the future.
Today, I only do what brings me joy and happiness, things I love to do
and that make my heart cheer, and I do them in my own way and in my own rhythm.
Today I call it “SIMPLICITY.”
As I began to love myself I freed myself of anything that is no good for my health—
food, people, things, situations, and everything the drew me down and away from myself.
At first I called this attitude a healthy egoism.
Today I know it is “LOVE OF ONESELF,”
As I began to love myself I quit trying to always be right,
and ever since I was wrong less of the time.
Today I discovered that is “MODESTY.”
As I began to love myself I refused to go on living in the past and worry about the future.
Now, I only live for the moment, where EVERYTHING is happening.
Today I live each day, day by day, and I call it “FULFILLMENT,”
As I began to love myself I recognized that my mind can disturb me
and it can make me sick.
But as I connected it to my heart, my mind became a valuable ally.
Today I call this connection “WISDOM OF THE HEART.”
We no longer need to fear arguments, confrontations or any kind of problems
with ourselves or others.
Even stars collide, and out of their crashing new worlds are born.
Today I know THAT IS “LIFE”!

Please pass this onto your friends and family. This is a special reminder of what life is trying to teach us, what it’s really about, what we eventually all come to learn. Be gentle on yourself and light on life. No more disapproval of self. It’s the biggest obstacle to your dreams. Doing so, you’ll be able to access all that happiness and joy that is just below that inner critical voice.

Posted by Ariane de Bonvoisin on February 23rd, 2010 in Ariane, Global/Social Change, Health, Personal Stories, Spirituality | 3 comments Read related posts in change, personal happiness

A struggling economy is the perfect time to reinvent yourself

During this current economy millions of people are coping with major unexpected change.

The Change Nation interview with Daryn Kagan is the perfect example of someone taking a seemingly dire situation and making lemons out of lemonaide. When faced with the demise of her job, she took that golden opportunity to embrace change and recreate a new career based on her passions, an inspirational news web site. I don’t know about you, but I love the idea of hearing about good news instead of news about war, poverty and disharmony.

If you find yourself unemployed and wondering what to do next, consider taking the time right now to discover what your true skills, talents and passions are and how you might best offer them to the world. I did this shortly after 911 and the demise of my tourism related business. Without 911, I would not be living my purpose and offering my highest talents to the world because I never had the time to stop and take a serious look at what I really wanted to do. I am sure you know the story: you get on the ‘money train’ and cant stop it long enough to jump off safely. Maybe you didn’t jump but were dumped, so what? This is still your perfect opportunity to begin anew.

Take this golden opportunity to recreate your life so that you can now live the life of your dreams. Some of the most successful businesses in the world began when the economy was in recession, just look at Microsoft and Apple. Embrace change and get started now creating the life of your dreams now!

If you felt moved, inspired, touched, helped, annoyed, or anything after reading this, please let us know. Our wonderful bloggers really do appreciate your comments and feedback. It’s super easy and takes a minute. Click on comments below.

Posted by Kathi Burns on February 8th, 2010 in General, Global/Social Change, New Directions, Personal Stories, Uncategorized | 2 comments Read related posts in Career, change, economy, inspiration, new careers, passion, purpose, tough economy, transition

Clutter and Muck Can Sabotage Your Efforts to Make Change

Adding space and clearing the muck in your life can bring forth powerful changes. You might think the pile of papers on your kitchen counter is nothing more than a pile of papers.

Once you create order and clear them away, you might begin to realize that your bills are being paid more promptly or perhaps, your arguments with your spouse have suddenly subsided. With less late fees or more martial harmony, you will feel more confidant to pursue a new hobby or career.

Clutter and muck are sneaky saboteurs. Making one seemingly small and insignificant change in your life can bring about a profound shift that will benefit your life in ways you can never imagine. You will inevitably change your relationship with change.

Whatever you happen to be stuck in, there are tried, tested and true methods that you can use to get unstuck. Take action and clear some clutter from any area in your life.

With every small change I know that you will become more inspired and your creativity will blossom. You will flourish and find the time to do the things in your life that you really want to do. When you clear your muck and develop systems, you will have more time to see your priorities clearly and create the change towards a life that truly fulfills and inspires you.

Posted by Kathi Burns on February 5th, 2010 in Career, General, New Directions | No comments Read related posts in action, change, clutter, getting organized, Organizing, personal change, personal growth, unstuck