Have you ever felt weighed down by your past?

As though no matter what you did, you can’t seem to shake the hurt, pain or the negative thought patterns borne of some past experience, and move forward to your dreams?

It can feel like you’re stuck in a pessimistic loop, unable to move forward toward greater happiness, joy and fulfillment. If your past is holding you back from creating a life you truly love living, remember that you are far more powerful than anything you may have faced or are currently are facing.

You have the power to design a life you love and turn your dreams into your reality!

From a young age, I had been a person whose heart went out for the ‘underdog’. I was kind and caring to classmates and animals. I had a lot of ‘feelings’ that weren’t often understood by my family. They thought I was too ‘sensitive’ and ‘too trusting’. I felt unseen which led to the underdevelopment of my identify. The stage was set for my victimization in my teens.

Here are five signs you are in an abusive relationship. I include my personal experience with abuse and the coaching I would give to someone who finds themselves in similar situations:

• Physical Abuse

• Intimidation

• Emotional Abuse

• Economic Abuse

• Isolation

Do you set aside intentional time to reflect on the things that aren’t serving you anymore? 

In our quest for personal transformation and spiritual alignment, it’s easy to get caught up looking for what’s next. We put our attention towards what we want and where we’re going, and we forget that part of forward progress is cleaning house or “taking out the garbage.” 

Think of it this way, if you continued to fill your home with all of the new things you need and want – new groceries, new clothes, new furniture – but you never spent time clearing clutter and throwing out the old, you would be living in a state of disaster! 

The same is actually true for our inner worlds. If we don’t clear out the clutter, we don’t have space leftover for growth, expansion, joy, and a deeper connection to Spirit. 

Self-Improvement is a mainstream concept, but what does it really mean to "Self-Improve?" What are we really improving when we self-improve? And what "self" are we improving?

As many of you know, we each have numerous "selves" - our wounded self, our soul self, and our loving adult self. Our soul self is our true self, our core self, and our essence - our inner child. Our soul self is our passion, our joy, our gifts and talents, our ability to love, and our creativity. We come into this life as our soul self, and when this self is loved and valued by our parents, we continue to naturally grow our God-given gifts and talents and manifest the fullness of our beings. This self wants to improve by learning the skills necessary to fully express itself.

Gretta is very devoted to her spiritual path. It is extremely important to her to move through her life as a loving and compassionate person. She has a big heart and is always doing nice things for other people. It was, therefore, deeply upsetting to her when she would find herself suddenly irritated, angry, or blaming toward someone. Yet as hard as she tried to be consistently loving and compassionate, the anger and blame continued to surface.

As we worked together, Gretta discovered that, as important as it was to her to be loving and compassionate with others, she was rarely loving and compassionate with herself.

Each of us will experience loss, and sometimes it’s wrapped up in good news or a happy event. If you, or someone you love is struggling with loss, keep reading. I’m going to share the benefits of embracing your feelings of loss and sadness. Some of them might surprise you.

Loss can be a complicated feeling. It can be found in tragic stories and events, as well as experiences that hold love and good feelings. It arises when we are not completely ready to let go of what we have. Sometimes it lingers from long ago.

Did you do sparklers as a kid?  

Remember that sense of delight? It is your true state and when you embrace it, you embody your wholeness. 

We all possess the capacity to heal ourselves.

The greatest thing you will ever learn to do is to realize there is only one of us here. We actually are all the people we've been arguing or bonding with.

We are all of the circumstances, all the trials and tribulations, and all the victories and inspirations that have ever occurred. We are all of it.

In anxious times the focus on fear seems constant and yet extremely unhelpful. Neither the body nor the mind can adapt to fear for long stretches of time without causing bad effects. If you feel fearful and you want to feel differently, what path should you take? 

People tend to be unsuccessful at finding a way out of anxiety.  That’s because the two most common responses to anxiety are denial and distraction. By ignoring your anxiety or doing something that takes your mind off it, you might find temporary relief. But is there something more permanent and effective? 

The art of a fulfilled life is the art of "letting'':
letting in, letting out, letting go. - Ernst Ferstl

My whole life, I craved love and perfection. The stakes were so high that I find it hard to relax.  I need to do it all. But it's not easy to carry this heavyweight upon me. Always worrying about love, career, or health. Doubting my own self-worth, ability, and strength. Choosing the wrong people to fall in love with always confirmed they were right about me. I was not worthy of their love and attention. I talk too much, I am too loud, I take too much space. On a career level, I doubted, too. Am I good enough? My dream was to become an artist. I wanted to sing, act, model, and write. Do I sound well, do I overact, am I pretty enough, do people like my writings?

Resolving Inherited Trapped Emotions With Energy Healing

Scientists have long speculated about the possibility of emotionally charged memories being passed from one generation to another. In a famous experiment, researchers administered uncomfortable electrical shocks to the feet of mice that were, at the same time, exposed to a powerful odor. The scientists observed that the offspring of these mice became extremely wary when they smelled this particular odor, even if they had never smelled it before.

All of us have a dysfunctional part, a part that operates from fears and false beliefs. This part – our lower left-brain ego wounded self - was deeply programmed from the time we were born to think and behave in ways that, today, create much of our fear and pain.

The purpose of the wounded self is to attempt to have control over getting love, avoiding pain, and feeling safe. While the wounded self might profess a belief in a higher power, it doesn't have a personal connection with a loving source of truth, strength, and wisdom, and so it often feels alone in the world. It tries to fill the inner emptiness, which results from being spiritually disconnected, with various addictions - to people, processes, things, and substances.

And Just Like That, the title of the new Sex and The City series, comes from Carrie watching Mr. Big suddenly die in the first episode and then, just like that, her life is changed forever.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, nearly all of us have had our own (maybe many) life altering experiences throwing us into the deep end of the pool of uncertainty.

From having to worry about if we would run out of toilet paper, to catching a life-threatening virus, to changes in every aspect of daily life, life as we once knew it has changed. And NO ONE knows anything for certain anymore, in spite of the constant speculation by cable TV hosts trying to figure it out.

Do you worry too much? Your soul thrives when you’re filled with love, happiness, peace and joy. But during those dark days of doubt and anxiety, you may have trouble connecting with your soul.

How can we stop feeling anxious over the many situations we have no control over? Here are 5 tools to try when your chronic worrying suffocates the power of your soul:

In the human experience, grief is unavoidable. Why is it sometimes so hard to acknowledge, honor, and feel the grief?

Often, grieving can seem scary and overwhelming and so what we tend to do is avoid it, deny it, suppress it, numb ourselves from it and try to move on. This only keeps us stuck.

If you’ve lived long enough, you’ve experienced phases in your life where everything seemed to be falling apart. Whether it was due to the loss of a loved one, divorce, being fired from your job, or the failure of a business you started — coming to terms with reality was painful and crushing.

At one time or another everyone experiences the modern version of fear, which is anxiety. Our ancestors experienced physical threats that made the fight-or-flight response useful. That’s no longer the case. In modern life, largely thanks to increased stress, we endure a low-level pressure on the nervous system. When this chronic, nagging response rises to the surface of the mind, a person notices the telltale signs of modern fear: worry, insomnia, an absence of happiness, distraction, all of which can build into chronic anxiety.

The way we deal with modern fear determines to a great extent how creative, fulfilling, and contented daily life is. Many billions are spent on tranquilizers, which can reduce the symptoms of anxiety, but they are only a stopgap. Take away the drug, and anxiety almost always returns.

Creating and claiming the future you desire begins with asking yourself who you need to become to live your dream life. 

If you close your eyes and see the future of your dreams, what is different about you? Have your values changed? How are you spending your time? Who have you become?

Are you basically OK?

The Practice:
Notice you’re alright right now.

Many of us suffer from deep childhood wounds, others of us are scarred from life in general. Given the state of the world, we’ve all been traumatized on various levels.

And, we all have individual things that “trigger” us into feelings that impact our mental stability where we are reminded of past trauma or previous negative experiences and we suddenly feel unsafe, endangered, frightened, overwhelmed, etc.

Most of us have big dreams for our lives, but when we think about everything we will have to learn and experience to achieve success and make those dreams a reality, our fears can overwhelm us.

But if you don’t face and overcome your fear of success, you run the risk of experiencing greater negative consequences, such as never getting what you want in life. It’s only by facing your fears and taking action anyway that you can achieve your goals and thrive.