Here we are, the first Monday of the New Year and I have a secret for you on how to make this year better ~ your thoughts. Where are your thoughts right now? Are you worrying about something? Anxious about the future? Stressed about a job? A relationship? A health crisis?

Here’s the secret part – you can’t control any of those events named above. You can’t control the housing market or the weather or even the behaviors/actions of any other person in your life right now. What you can control is your reactions and/or your thoughts. You can control how big anything can feel emotionally by how/where you focus your thoughts. You can be Mindful.

Try this, think of a person or situation that you are concerned about. Feel things as you normally experience them – thinking about worst-case scenarios and ‘what-if’s.’ Now how do you feel?

Now shift your thinking – believe things work out. Adapt an attitude of faith that the person can and do find their way through. Maybe not in the timing of your preference, but in the timing other’s highest and best. Imagine things working out for those around you and most importantly – for YOU.

Now how do you feel? Bigger? Calmer inside? Sink into that peaceful place of mindfulness.

Here’s one thing to remember – yes, life is scary sometimes. People we love get hurt, jobs are lost, hearts are broken, debts can overwhelm and still the best support you can give anyone (including yourself!) is a firm belief they (you) will be victorious.

Be Mindful and unlock Peace in any situation…

Recently I have been contacted by many new clients struggling with strange things going on at their homes.  It seems that between midnight and 3:30ish am something odd is afoot.  Their dogs are barking at doorways, sleeplessness, feelings of being watched, unexplained anxiety and irritability are just a few of the complaints…

 If you are experiences any difficulties such as these, here are a few things to consider…

 Spring is a time of forward energy and anger.  In Eastern medicine it is viewed to be closely aligned with anger and the liver.  The idea is the anger acts as a force to break through – for a seed or plant, this would provide the energy to break through the ground and join the sun again.  Interestingly, Eastern medicine also divides the day into two hour intervals.  The intervals identify when your body/emotions are more susceptible to certain energies.  The hours of 1 am to 3 am are associated with the liver.

 The liver is said to process anger and emotions.  The liver is also related to water – which of course, our culture has long associated with emotions.  Are you angry?  And do you drink a lot of alcohol?  This could suggest you have repressed issues with anger and unspoken emotions.  Try drinking more water to flush your system of any stuck emotions or toxins. 

Another aspect to consider is the very energy that surrounds us.  For many individuals who channel masters and the like, now is said to be a time of great shifting.  The recent earthquakes (more are predicted by this group) are intended to not only open the hearts of all people by wanting to help those who are affected, but also to change the very core of the earth – readying the planet for a total shift in consciousness.  Karen Bishop is an excellent resource of this belief.

 She believes at this moment not only in the shifting earth, but that there are many ‘visiting’ entities.  Some are good and some are bad.  You have the ability to send any of these negative beings away with just the phrase, go back to the light.

 Personally, as of late I have been missing things.  I was in a session last week with a client and my pen just disappeared.  I had just gotten up and left the room to find a pen – my client and I even joked about kids and missing pens.  I put the pen on my desk and not five minutes later it was gone.  My client was speechless as we both saw me get the pen and put in on my desk.  It lay right next to us as we were talking.  Then it was gone.  She was aghast and I was laughing – damn leprechauns.  

 I’m kind of used to these kind of games and I know the pen will show again where I least expect it.  When you are more sensitive to your world, you will discover magic is still afoot.  I like to think of it as the universe letting me know it is all around me every moment and also letting me know who is really in charge – not me!

 So, if some odd things are happening right now you have options.  You can clear yourself and your home.  (How to smudge your home or office.)  You can have a sense of humor.  You can journal to discover and release any anger or negative emotions you are holding.  Finally you can seek help if need be, it’s there, waiting for you.   Ask and you shall receive.

New beginning can happen any day.  It’s an internal decision to make a shift, sometimes by choice and sometimes by circumstance.  The real question is, are you ready for a new beginning?  Are you ready to stop living on a path that doesn’t work and move to a path that does?  That shift can begin today…if you choose. 

What are healthy boundaries?  Are you not supposed to feel for another’s pain?  Are you not supposed to help out?  Is offering advice bad?

 Here’s how you can quickly identify healthy boundaries – check in with your stomach and heart.  When you are tilting towards unhealthy there is an emotional pull you can actually feel from your stomach and/or heart.  It’s almost like an energy rope pulling or sucking you in a certain direction (I must save them!  I have to step in!)  There is desperate feeling in the air.

 With healthy boundaries you feel grounded, maybe your feet even feel heavy.  Your heart may still hurt for someone, but it is more like a squeeze then an uncontrollable pull. 

 It’s not usually the specific activity that identifies something as unhealthy but the emotions that are driving the support/boundary.  Sometimes people really do need extreme support offered by you, but the cost does not have to be your well-being. 

 How to do keep healthy boundaries?  By taking care of you every day.  That means checking in with yourself daily; eating and sleeping well; laughing; using humor when all else fails and when you feel that negative energetic pull, that’s your queue to consciously ground your energy down.  Down through your feet until you feel a sense of balance return.

 So, are you feeling grounded today?

3. Do you feel required to help?  It’s your job?  Is there a guilty, emotional tug that drives you to help?  A good question for yourself is – do I have a choice?  If you don’t feel like you have a choice, nine times out of ten you are really rescuing. 

 When you help someone from a healthy place, it’s from a place of fullness not lack.  Your support is not dependent on anything in return, just goodwill.  Your help has healthy boundaries and you are able to see the person also has choices.  The person can say no to your offered help and it’s ok.  You can say no and that’s ok too. 

 If you struggle with saying no, then I encourage you to go deeper.  This isn’t about helping someone else, but about validating how you see yourself.  Rescuing becomes how you identify yourself and your role in relationships.  Ultimately it becomes how you see your worth – to rescue others…Unfortunately this seemingly ‘good’ intention is actually harmful – do you really know what’s best for others?  Are you some all-knowing God here to re-direct your loved ones to the right path?  Maybe making mistakes is how they will learn the lessons they are here to transcend… 

 I like to think of babies learning to walk.  They must fall down, over and over.  They will never, ever learn to walk on their own if someone is always holding them up beneath their arms.  They need to find their own balance amid the falls…We never change.  Our falls look different at 32 and 48, but fall we do…And each of us, no matter what the event, must find our own separate peace…Can you allow another’s peace to look different from your own and be ok with that?

2. Regardless of whether the person asked for help or not, can the person do this for themselves?  Or is your ‘help’ keeping this person in a victim place or dependent on you? 

 Sure, sometimes we all need help.  There are real health crises and other life events that require support from those around us, but is your help actually undermining the success of another?  Does this other person need to do for themselves if only to know they can?  Sometimes our help does more harm then good.

1.  When we rescue, often we just step in without an invitation.  We withhold information from the person to ‘protect’ them or we ‘do’ things for the person to make it easier for them, after all, we’re just helping.  

 Actually, there is a fine line between helping and enabling.  I good way to identify the difference is to ask yourself if you are looking for a pay-off?  Are you looking to control something, someone or even the information?  Are you looking for love?  Are you trying to keep things the same?  Do you want to feel like the special friend/lover who really understands?  If you are looking for any emotional payoff – guess what?  You are in rescue mode.

 As you can see, when you are rescuing someone, it is actually about you and how you want to feel about yourself.  You may convince yourself it is about the other, but that’s a mirage to keep your self-image held up.  If you are rescuing then you can’t be the one messed up, right?

 Rescuing keeps you busy.   Obligations are created to distract and provide excuses as to why your own goals and dreams are delayed if not ultimately left unrealized.  It’s a choice.  It’s a choice to get into your own life and rescue yourself from the same behaviors that keep you in a less-than place.

Are you rescuing someone?  Here are three simple questions to ask yourself before you help…

 1.         Has this person asked you to do this for them? 

2.         Can this person do this for themselves?

3.         Do you want to do it?

 Rescuing others comes as the cost of our own journey.  How can you possibly get to your own best life when you are distracted by where those around you are on their own journeys?  Or is that the point?  Does rescuing others keep you from ‘failing’ at your own life?

 This week in my blog I will be examining these three questions and how they impact you connecting to your most abundant life…So take a few moments over the next day and really look at the relationships in your own life – are you rescuing someone?  Check back tomorrow to explore what may be driving your desire to rescue…

Instead of getting stuck in “Why me?”  Ask yourself, “What for?”  What do you need to learn?  If you are having trouble understanding your responsibility in this situation, ask yourself the following questions.

 1.         Is there a pattern?

2.         What am I doing the same?

3.         Am I telling my truth?

4.         Am I protecting someone’s feelings by keeping it the same? (can be your feelings…)

5.         What am I afraid of?

If you have kids you will understand this statement – September has become the lost month.  I can’t keep track of all the papers – new school rules, permission slips, order forms, jog-a-thons, one-time-only fees, lunch boxes, lunch money, conferences, pages and pages of homework, completed work on the refrigerator as well as work ‘to be completed at home and returned’ the next day.  Aaaaggghhhh!  Stop – I beg of you, stop pecking me to death with inane crap.  I swear if I had known this before having cute babies – I might have rethought the entire deal! 

 But September is now slipping into October, all the permission slips are mostly in, and check-ups are complete.  Things will surely settle down for a bit, right?…Now what do you want to be for Halloween?