A Gentle, Lovely Reminder

You MUST go and hear this couples story. Stephanie and Christian Nielson, parents of 4, were in a near fatal airplane accident in 2008. Stephanie was burned on over 80% of her body, and Christian, over 40%. Their spirit and story is inspiring and is a gentle, lovely reminder of what is important in this life.

Watch this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHDvxPjsm8E&feature=player_embedded

Then Visit this blog

http://nieniedialogues.blogspot.com/

A String Around My Finger

We have been told that we should follow our head and leave our feelings out of decision making because feelings are misleading.

I beg to differ. Our feelings or emotions are our God-given, built in devise to keep us on track. Emotions keep us in tune with how we are living and in what direction we are going.

Now, if we get really angry and say or do things in that anger, that is different. I am talking about how we feel on a day-to-day basis, when we are washing the dishes, surfing the Internet, or interacting with our family.

Remember that cute little cricket, Jimminy, from Pinocchio?? "Always let your conscious be your guide!" We all have him in our pocket or on our shoulder with his cute little top hat and cane.

This is my new challenge to you, I am trying this myself and I have noticed that it is working:

Tie a string around your finger (other alternatives are a rubber band around your wrist or some other type of bracelet or ring). Every time you see this string, "check-in" to how you are feeling.

Ask your self, "How am I feeling? What am I thinking about? What am I thinking to myself, about myself, or about others? How am I speaking to others? Where are my thoughts?"

The next part is simple, IF your emotions are positive, SMILE and keep going. If they are negative, think of a phrase you can say to "flip it". For example: If I checked in and I was feeling anxious about something (which happens a lot for me) I would say out loud, with that anxiety in mind, "But what if that doesn't happen, then what?" Immediately my mind leaves that negative thought and I am thinking of the positive or the good things that will happen instead.

If I found I was thinking something negative about someone, I would say, "But this person is so great because_______."

It works. It's easy. You will be amazed at what goes on inside of your head! I know I was. I did not even realize how damaging some of my thoughts, and in consequence my emotions were and how they were leading me down paths I wasn't even aware of.

By becoming more aware of your emotions and where they are leading you, you can take control and shape your future in an amazing way.

Good Luck!!

It's been a while. I have taken several mental vacations since my last post. Busy being a Mom of 5 and a wife.

In between those mental vacations I have done a lot of learning and growing too. I feel like life just gets better and better each day. I won't lie...I have my hard days, WHO DOESN'T??? But I am amazed at how much hope and JOY I feel on a daily basis. And here is the cool thing...the only thing that has changed is ME. The way I think, the things I think, the way I react and the way I perceive the things around me.

I would see this quote on the back of a car at my kids school all the time and it always made me smile. It said, "Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change."

I want to share with you 4 EASY steps to changing ANYTHING in your life. Now keep in mind as you are implementing these steps into your lives...they are EASY, but not familiar. You may struggle a bit because most of us do not know that WE have the control. It may be new to us to accept that life is not happening TO us, it is happening BECAUSE of us.

I believe that Carol Tuttle explained it best when she related change to coming out of a dark closet. We've been walking around in that dark closet, banging into walls and trying to feel our way around. When a door opens for us, or when we are presented with a better way to live, we walk out of that closet and shut the door behind us. But pretty soon we are back to that door, now locked, banging our head against it, screaming "Let me in!" Even though it was dark and bleak, it was familiar. If we persist and believe that we can change and continue to practice our new-found way of living, we may go back to that door and knock a few times, but we will eventually say goodbye to that door forever.

Here are the 4 EASY Steps: (get a pen and paper ready, you will want to write these down! Not only is this process EASY but it is FUN!!)

#1 -Identify what you WANT in life. This may be easier done by listing first the things you DON'T want. Once you have your list (it can be as long or as short as you want) of DON'T wants, you can easily change them into your DO WANTS. For example "I do not want debt" changes into "I want to be free of owing anyone money".

It is SO important to get your list of WANTS, because, as we know, when we focus on what we don't want, we get a whole lot of what we don't want, and vis-a-versa. Easy attracts easy, hard attracts hard. (see more on the Law of Attraction here)

#2-(this is the FUN part) Now, choose ONE thing on your list. You will know which one. It will be the one that stands out the most and the issue that keeps coming up for you. Once you have chosen, close your eyes and image what it would be like if that one things was already in your life. Imagine what it feels like. What do you hear? What are people around you seeing and saying about your success? How do you feel? Really get to a place where you truly believe it has happened.

#3-Now go throughout your day and act accordingly. Act as if this issue has already been cleared or come to fruition. When self-doubt or self-sabotaging thoughts creep in, and they will, close your eyes and go to that place again.

A dear friend of mine was trying to loose weight and she tapped her goal weight right over the face on her scale, so when she stepped onto her scale she saw that she weighed exactly what she wanted to weigh. Sound silly? It may be, but our subconscious mind doesn't know the difference between real thoughts and imaginary ones. Our subconscious also HAS to be right, so if we are telling our mind that it is fit and trim and weighs 130 pounds, you better believe that our minds will deliver.

#4-That leads us into our last step, and this one may sometimes be the hardest. It is Inspired Action. We had already identified what we WANT, imagined being there, and stayed in a place where we could continue to believe it until we see it. Now we get to act on inspiration that comes to us.

You can't get anywhere, except to the next episode of Survivor by sitting on the couch. It just ain't gonna happen. If I set a goal to run a marathon (which I would never do by the way...=)...) I won't be ready on race day unless I have trained and ran mile after mile. Is training always going to be FUN and EASY? Nope. But it will be worth the effort.

We all have inside of us a God-given tool to see good and see what is right. We also have the ability to go after it.

If I want to loose weight, I need to take the Inspired Action to loose. I need to get up instead of sleep in. I need to listen when my sisters or friends are taking about a healthy recipe then ask for it. I need to research on the Internet some good muscle building exercises. I need to say YES when a friend asks me to get up early with her and go to the track. I need to act.

I can tell you that these steps work. They are working for me. I know that they can work for you.

Like I said at the beginning, nothing about my life has changed except ME. I have closed that door on a dark, depressing, sad closet and stepped into the light. The view from my new closet is amazing. I see hope and color again. I see life and love and JOY!!

PLEASE SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS WITH ME! I WANT TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR SUCCESSES!!