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The Secret To Success In Any Relationship

You are free when you realize that you don’t have the power to MAKE another person change.

You suffer when you spend your time trying to control the lives of those around you to be what you want them to be.

People don’t change unless they really want to change. You only have the power to share your perspective, wisdom, and invite them to consider a different way of doing things.

When someone changes simply to make you happy, rest assured, it doesn’t last.

They must not only want to change but must be committed to it. They also must be open to your help. We sometimes try to change people that are not asking for help and end up trying to control them to fit our ideal.

Transformation Is Possible - It Is Already Here

The one thing in life that never changes is change, or so people say. But in reality we all experience a struggle between accepting change and resisting it, trying to make things different and yet feeling an anxious need to keep things the same. This struggle is what makes personal change so difficult. We can’t make up our minds once and for all how we feel about changing.

If change is so difficult, how can there be personal transformation, upon which the whole movement of human potential is based?  It takes vision and commitment to believe that such a thing is even possible. Most people have mixed feelings about how their lives are going. “Taking the bitter with the sweet” is an old saying in English dating back to the 13th century, but it expresses a universal experience in every society.

Simple Habits to Manifest Change

I am always pretty much in sync with everyone else by the end of January still considering change and transformation as a bit of a sport I might actually win. Yes, I have learned how to make change into a game since I am not always successful in avoiding the pitfalls of the myriad threads of old storylines to prove my essential unworthiness. You know what I mean, 3 weeks of pure bliss on a new food plan and anti-aging Goop-approved weirdness, then face plant without noticeable cause into a giant vat of cream cake. Who me? Not I!! 

You might identify with being sick and tired of being sick and tired, or raring to go and get a brand new you, or realizing nothing is actually broken, you just aren’t where you want to be… yet. This brings up the “mindful of remaining in the moment and being with what is” existential dilemma. 

Oh, what a hairball!  

How to Set Intentions for the New Year Into Motion: Count Your Teeniest Wins!

At the beginning of every year, there’s an energy that’s palpable where you feel such huge promise for newness, in every way. Yes, we all get to start again! YAY. Yoga, Pilates, promises to yourself to change your diet, let go of the old habits that messed you up the year before, start a prayer and meditation practice and quit sugar/alcohol/(fill in blank) for real this time, take some interesting classes you’ve always wanted to do. Everyone is raring to go. Success by design is inherent just in the words “new year”. The failures of yesterday can be erased on Jan 1. That is a big fat promise.

But not so fast. These are all worthy intentions but what if your old self, the one you’re trying to change is not willing to do the list in your hand. What if your old self is so invested in your identity of feeling shitty, lonely, hard done by, angry, etc. that it thinks your new ideas are just phooey and is determined to prove it to you?

Change in Love: Why the World Needs You to Seize Your Dreams

They say the ice caps are melting, the earth is heating up and the world economies are cooling down. Maybe some part of you is frightened by the unprecedented fluctuations. But another part of you, a light gobbling super freak, is clapping its eternal hands in joy. These are the times we came for. This is what we trained for. We’re in times of the greatest changes, to help us make our greatest changes.

It’s evolution’s love song to itself. It’s the necessary forest fire to clear out dead wood and encourage new growth, a stronger strain, to flourish. Where do you want to grow right now? Where is the sap rising in you? It’s time to follow your gut and become a change agent, one who can affect the course of humanity, by changing who you think you are, and what you think is possible. The times are ready for you now.

How Yoga Helps To Control Bad Habits

It is said, bad habits are hard to break. But we’re the ones who can undo it making space for other good habits and train our mind to bring the necessary change. Know how to use yoga to control and break bad habits with a holistic approach.

“The secret to permanently breaking any bad habit is to love something greater than the habit.”
- Bryant McGill

Got a bad habit that you can’t just break? Fret not; apply the holistic approach to hack them away.

When we leave our mind to itself, it follows certain habits like a groove. This can be amazing only if the habits are not hampering the body’s balance. In the process of devising certain habits, we often ignore both the emotional and physical need. Certain habits or bad behavior are hard to change. Even after many efforts, most of the old habits are relentless.

Enter Yoga! That makes us aware of our ability to change our mind in order to turn down the habits.

It’s spring – ready for a new beginning?

It’s spring!

Just saying those words can make you feel more positive and optimistic about what come.

Spring is a time for new beginnings so remember…

A small shift in your beliefs can create a huge change in your life!

Are your accumulated beliefs uplifting your life or do you need to change your thoughts?

A change in perspective is all it takes for a fresh new start… a beautiful new beginning and a shift in your life… your love… your success and your health.

What shift would you like to make this spring?

There’s one thing for sure, the fastest way to move from where you are now to where you want to be is to raise your frequency and neutralize the old, outmoded thoughts that sabotage your best intentions.

Rising Out of Hardship

I always hear what’s soft breathing inside what’s hard. I think this comes from my great-grandfather’s family, who hid from the Nazis in Romania, who slept in cemeteries under the blue night and woke with the stories of the dead, which filled them with resilience.

Just today, I heard a woman who’d been tortured softly play a wooden flute. Though she can’t put to rest what was done to her, her softness filled the room, making each of us think of someone who’s loved us more than we thought possible. And there was the minister born to blind parents. He said with a tremble that his father saw him better than anyone. And the burly electrician spoke of his colonel in Vietnam taking his dead friend from him when he couldn’t put him down. And two states away, the stepdad who never knew his father calls his stepson’s father to ask him to stay with them, because he wants his boy to have what he could never find. And just last week I met the nurse who helped me walk after surgery twenty-eight years ago. We cried in each other’s arms.

So if you think someone is brave, tell them. For they might feel frightened and small, and you will change their life. If you think someone is beautiful and aglow, tell them. For they might feel dark and lonely, and you will quiet their demons. When you reach to help someone who is stuck, you might free the flight of their soul. And they will return when you least expect, to bring you something from the sky. Never underestimate the strength of your kindness to suture the torn.

Textures

As life flows thru us we experience many insights and changes. These shifts create texture in our life and the energy that surrounds us. Similar to not wanting a flat line on a heart monitor, a flat life is not desirable.  Living with awareness of the textures, leads to a life that is rich with emotions and pure potential.   

Think of textures as infinite possibilities. Textures are the ability to feel, dream, touch, discover and expand into what life offers us.  To fully experience all the textures, one must have faith in the power of mindfulness. It requires the ability to look beyond one’s personal life situation and recognize the connection to a vast universe.  

What Drives this Technological Evolution?

Scientists first postulated that a genetic change occurred in our species resulting in increased intelligence. Another theory stated that there was a change in the structure of the brain which accounted for the boom in intelligence. The best explanation I've heard is the fact that technology was stymied by a limitation in population size. 

If you live in a small group someone has an idea, there may not be anybody else to offer a follow up to help make that idea a reality. As the population of a community gets larger and larger, ideas are able to shared more freely and change can be achieved. As more and people come together, and communities get larger, evolution indicates that the field of information is greater and new ideas can be synthesized that wouldn't be possible in a smaller population. Right now, we as humans are experiencing emergence.

Life is a constant change, must we always change with it?

With the newness of the new year settling into our system, we are learning to become comfortable, not only within ourselves, but also with our environment and our social scenario. 

Everything around us is changing constantly, but of course it does not imply that we must change with it. If the change occurs as a part of our own level of consciousness, it is of course desirable, yet if it is only on the periphery or on the surface it becomes meaningless and actually a negative hindrance to our own level of self growth.

Stress can never completely disappear from our lives. We cannot just definitely say, Abra ca dabra, clap our hands, and the stress is gone. No, this is a constant, ever moving process. We cannot even say that it will disappear completely. Sometimes we need to strike a truce with it.

How to Trigger Change

When Dr. David Dao was dragged off a United Express Flight by police officers from Chicago’s O’Hare airport on April 9, 2017, the ensuing outcry resulted in policy changes at major airlines. When Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, the highly split US Senate came together and voted for the first time in U.S. history to advance a bill to withdraw military forces from an unauthorized war (in Yemen) using the War Powers Resolution Act. The November 27, 2018 Senate vote, a stunning 63 to 37 bi-partisan action, delivered an historic rebuke to Saudi Arabia and President Trump.  
 

These two stories are among the many examples of actions that trigger demands for change.

4 Tips to Help You Accept & Embrace Change

Whether you perceive it or not, everything is constantly changing – the environment, the weather, the economy, technology, society, culture, your friends and family, your body, everything. And the better able you are to embrace change in what is happening in your world, the easier it will be for you to live your best life.

“Change is the only constant in life.” – Heraclitus

For some people, the idea of constant and never-ending change is terrifying, because change often involves risk and loss – possibly of something big, like your house, your job, your money, your friends, your family, or just the loss of whatever is comfortable and familiar.

How To Flow With Change

Change is sometimes uncomfortable, weird, gawky, and stumbling.  It’s a messy thing…and just when you feel you’ve got this life dance thing down, the beat changes as soon as you think you know the steps, then you start to get dizzy and you have to sit down! Next, you discover you were actually playing musical chairs!

Yeah… I know, you thought your guardian angel was in charge of all that. Oh.. wait now we’re doing the cha cha cha?! I obviously didn’t bring the right shoes!  

Why is it that we think change and transformation have to be graceful and sparkly and shiny and liberating as soon as we consider it?  Why is it that when change happens, we recoil in fear and anger and then expect some magic being to fix it (like now please!) when a little time is what we actually need to adjust?

“But I’m spiritual I know these things.. all is well right? The Law of Abundance states… blablablabla… so why don’t I feel good, surrendered, happy, wise, serene, grateful all the time?”   

Seriously evolving out loud is part Presence and Wisdom, part Ridiculous, part Graceful, and mostly chasing it all around like trying to catch fireflies in a jar.

Is it because when we wake up and ignite our inner Light we think enlightenment means we will all of a sudden become creatures of never-ending joy and awareness? Is it because we think opening up to the deeper layers of Consciousness gives us an intuition that will guarantee that we will know how to avoid all obstacles, and pain and slide over our fear and loss like Elsa in Frozen singing Let it Go? (gosh I can’t stand that song).

How to Create Opportunity from Unfortunate Circumstances

Unfortunately, we all experience hard times in our lives. Life hits us hard when we least expect it.

You may be facing a divorce. Your home may have been hit by a tornado, earthquake or some other force of nature. You might have been stricken with an illness that keeps you from working or operating in your day-to-day life. Or maybe, the people around you are breaking off or looking to change their relationship with you.

Change is an unstoppable force in all of our lives. Sometimes it hits us so hard and fast, it feels like our heads are constantly spinning. And when we’re not prepared for it, we feel victimized by forces that seem completely out of our hands.

As I’ve traveled the country these past few weeks for my new book “I’ve Been Thinking…”, I’ve had the opportunity to meet thousands of people.

In my conversations, I’ve been struck by the number of people of all ages who have told me that they feel as though they are in “transition.”

Yes, that’s the word that keeps coming up over and over. Transition.

“I just got out of college and I’m in transition.” “I just left my job and I’m in transition. “I used to be a lawyer and now I’m a stay-at-home mom, so I’m in transition.” “My kids just left for college…” “I just got fired from my job…” “My boyfriend just left me…” “My mother just died…” “I’m a caregiver and I can’t make ends meet and I’m in transition…” And the list goes on.

It’s interesting to observe your own reaction when change presents itself in life.

It may be economic change in your circumstances, it may be a change in the way you spend your life. A lot of people, as their children grow, have an opportunity to change their lives, but they have such strong habits in how they’ve always done things and who they’ve always been, that they get frightened at the freedom to change when an opportunity presents itself.

Up until now, they justified their existence by what their karma commitments are; “I have to be this way,” and I would say that doesn’t have to be the case. They don’t have to wait for their kids to grow up, because that waiting becomes their daily routine.

How much of who I was yesterday is defining who I am today? How much can I allow who I am today to be totally open and tuning and responding to the situation, which includes everything I was yesterday, but also all that I will be tomorrow?

Can our minds really shape our outer world? Yes, our thinking definitely affects a lot of things. If you think and believe you are unworthy (of love, prosperity, achievement etc.) your thoughts, even the random ones will reflect that, and your behaviors and choices will follow.

What we think about often enough will solidify, make a neural network in our brains (straight up science). What happens is that we essentially turn on an automatic pilot set to seek out evidence in the outer world of what we repeat internally. The Law of Abundance states that everything is possible at all times!

You may identify with my dating story. In my early years of dating I kept attracting men who would victimize me or betray me, most were unfaithful, and some were violent and abusive. I’ve shared my #metoo story about how I was raped, molested when I was little, and how shame took up residence inside me. I didn’t believe I was worthy of love, although I didn’t know that at the time, I saw myself as a victim and deep down I was terrified of intimacy. The outer world presented me with many ways to keep this story alive. I only noticed the bad boys.  

 Every year that passes we spend our last few hours reflecting on the “ALL” aspect of the last several months.

“ALL” that we were unable to accomplish. Who we may have had to say goodbye to or part ways with. The things we wish we would have done differently. The times throughout the year that were most difficult.

Even when we may briefly be able to identify the good from the previous year; it is too easy for our focus to swing back to “ALL” the negatives associated with the past 12 months.

But what about ALL the Good?

Great?

Remarkable?

Many, perhaps most, people would like to change their lives. They’d like the good parts to get better and the bad parts to go away. How you define these good and bad parts are entirely individual, reflecting the infinite diversity of human life. But consider yourself and take stock of where you are now. No one can do this realistically without wanting something to change. Yet after a certain point most people realize that change is difficult, and the path to finding a better life is twisted and rocky. A certain percentage will simply decide that “people don’t change” is a fact of life. If you are a hard realist, you give up trying to change yourself, much less anyone else.

With this background, it seems strange that so many people hold out the goal of total transformation, and in fact every spiritual tradition supports this, whether through redemption, salvation, the promise of heaven, enlightenment, or Nirvana. Total transformation goes far beyond making some changes in your life. If limited change is difficult, isn’t it folly to hold out for complete change?

Yes and no. The way that people struggle to break bad habits, improve their relationships, stop feeling anxious and insecure, and hoping to stay afloat financially is where change often proves futile. The mind struggling with itself can’t help but wind up with more struggle. In the world’s wisdom traditions, there is also a deep analysis of the ego, the isolated individual “I,” which by its nature is constantly presenting demands that never get satisfied, not to mention that the isolated “I” is by its very nature small and insecure. So relying on your ego or the restless mind doesn’t lead to meaningful personal change.