Thank God that my life continues to put me in touch with the feeling of powerlessness that I still have within me.

I had a moment of feeling completely overwhelmed and I could feel the powerlessness underneath it. Being a parent is hard. Some days you just have to wave the flag. I don’t know what wormhole I went down, but I found myself, after my daughter had a meltdown, in a yucky place where I stayed the rest of the day. 

Breaking free from negative thinking isn’t about techniques. It’s a revolution. You are literally going to walk in a different world. Because negative thinking, is just a mistaken idea about what’s possible and who you really are. And you have no idea what this kind of cruel perspective is costing you.

You may be unconsciously sabotaging your own life with negative thinking and fear. Your thoughts can create anxiety, frustration, and pain. A negative mindset can weaken your marriage, career, health, or more.

But likewise, you can shift into well-being and possibility. You can restore your connection to peace, sanity and even infinite creativity.

How? Here are five ways I’ve used with clients to stop negative thinking:

One of the great truths in this life is that if we know love, we will know loss.

The more we love, the more the loss will hurt. Yet, if we don’t love, what’s the point in being here?

When we can courageously love with all our heart, the reward is that through that love we will know depths in our heart and being otherwise inaccessible. What a gift. Still, things will never be the same.

I've Been Thinking...

I was talking to my brother Bobby the other day when he mentioned that a few people had told him that they listened to the podcast I recently recorded with my friends Hoda and Oprah. 

On the podcast, both of them talked about getting what they called the “truth talk” from me. I think Hoda even asked Oprah, “Have you ever had one of those conversations with Maria where she just gives it to you straight, and you are like, ‘What just happened?’” 

“You bet I have,” Oprah replied.

Bobby told me that he laughed when he heard that because he, too, has had those types of conversations with me. But then he said something that really got me thinking.

“You know, Maria, you have to be careful who you tell the truth to.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

“Because most people don’t want the truth,” he said. "We want the lie. It’s more comfortable. We can’t handle the hard truth, and we sure don’t want to deal with the truth. I’m like that sometimes. And so are you!”

Have you ever had appear in your mind the image of someone who hurt you, or run a whole mental movie about something that didn't work out, so that in recalling the event you actually relived the sense of loss?  

 How do such a painful images seem to stay in the mind, especially given the fact of how much we struggle to make them go away?

These unwanted images return again and again as they do because something within us keeps recalling them and drawing them to the forefront of our mind.

The the truth is we do not have to share a single moment with the memory of anything that we don't want to, this means there is something in our present nature that actually wants to recall painful past experiences.

Sacred Earth Journeys is leading the way in 2022 pilgrimages for the post COVID world. According to a recent article by National Geographic, “More travelers than ever are embarking on pilgrimages, a trend that may boom in a post-COVID world, as people move away from short-haul city breaks toward fewer flights and longer trips with a sense of purpose.”

Enter Phil Cousineau. Working with Phil for over a decade has imbued our mission as promoters of pilgrimage with insight and magic.

Our participants who decide to travel with Phil always come away with a deeper sense of themselves as wanderers, artists, and mythopoetic journeyers through life at large. 

One writer, Victoria Coen, had this to say after traveling with us and Phil on a writer’s retreat in Greece: 

“Phil is an exceptional leader, teacher, writer, storyteller. . .I enjoyed his immense knowledge of Greek history and his incredible way of conveying it in engaging storytelling format which made the learning more intellectually stimulating as well as emotionally captivating.”

Mindful Methods to Break the Cycle of Stress

Do you ever have moments when you feel like your thoughts have been hijacked by your emotions?

Living through a pandemic, along with the noise and negativity that now dominates our newsfeeds, it’s no surprise that we sometimes experience uncomfortable emotions such as fear, frustration, anger, and worry.

One reason we have survived on this planet for so long is that our brains have adapted to constantly consider “what if” scenarios. But in modern humans, “What if a lion is in this cave?” has been replaced with a never-ending playlist of fears, from worries about COVID-19 to apprehension over global warming and natural and political disasters.

Ages ago, checking to see if a man-eating feline was in the cave before we entered had real benefits for our survival. But today, constantly ruminating on things over which we have little control creates chronic stress that can harm our health and sap our joy in life.

Fortunately, there’s a wonderfully simple tool we can use to break the cycle of stress and refocus our attention on what’s most important to us. That tool is mindfulness.

Any time we pay attention to what we are thinking, feeling, and doing in the moment, we are practicing mindfulness. When we practice being present, observing and accepting our thoughts and feelings without judgment, we give our overworked nervous systems a break. This calms the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for processing fearful or threatening stimuli. By reducing the flow of stress hormones in our bodies, mindfulness also helps reduce inflammation and boosts the immune system.

For October, Emotional Wellness Month, here are some mindful methods you can practice throughout your day to help you stay calm in the chaos:

I hate the word hack. Let’s call this an abundance top tip: Panache’s top tip for abundance. 

What we have to do is wake up from the illusion of scarcity. I don’t want you to live at any level of scarcity. 

I began to notice that there are certain individuals that have this habit of carrying money around with them everywhere that they go. I thought this was weird at first, why carry money around everywhere you go when in today’s world you just need a credit card or debit card? 

And then I got it. They are carrying cash around as a physical reminder of the abundance they have access to. You don’t have the same relationship with your credit or debit card. So, I would like you to try it for three months. It doesn’t have to be a lot of money. It just needs to be money so that whenever you question abundance, or you question your right to earn and your right to live, you can look at it and be reminded of money, of the abundance you have access to. That way anytime you feel there is a need for money or for remembering abundance you can look at it and with the energy use it like a financial comfort blanket. 

Since stepping out of the first cave, we have made pilgrimage, trying to find where we are going by opening our hearts to where we began. Yet how can any of us tell where the other has been? You, ahead of me in the checkout line, what have you lost and gained along the way that I will never know?

They say the great flamingos of India prefer to migrate in a cloudless sky. They can travel up to 400 miles a night and when they land, who can know what they have seen?

Stress is one of the leading causes of chronic illness globally. Researchers evaluate Blue Zones when looking for low-stress lifestyles. The regions hold the most centenarians because of a low risk of fatal conditions.

When comparing residents in Blue Zones to Americans, they found critical differences in their daily stressors and symptoms. Professionals examined five signs you need to reduce your stress, improving your health and well-being. Before reviewing the symptoms, we must assess what stress is and where it comes from.

Do decisions come easy to you or would you rather get someone else to make them? Whenever you’re facing a tough choice or need to make an important determination in your life, turn to the inner-guidance of your soul!

Whenever we make decisions based on intuition, we trust our feelings. The more we use our inner-guidance to lead us, the more our confidence builds and the better we get at it.

Try to acknowledge, honor and act upon feelings and signs that will nudge you in the right direction. That’s your soul talking! I remember a time when I was about to give a talk for a sold-out event. Several days before, I kept getting a nagging feeling to call the organizers and check on the equipment for the evening. Instead, my rational mind kicked in: “No, John, they’re professionals who have done this hundreds of times before. Let it go.” (I may be a psychic medium, but I don’t always pay attention to everything I feel.)

A quality much needed in a divided world but not often encountered is compassion. Compassion is a way of connecting the love and self-awareness within yourself to another person. Compassion is more than kindness, then. It’s a natural expression of kindness and understanding when you love yourself. Without a sense of love inside, compassion has no foundation in consciousness.

There is a path to loving compassion, as with any spiritual quality.  The path has a beginning, middle, and end. Let me describe them to give you an idea of how the path unfolds.

Beginning: You see yourself as wanting and needing love, usually more than you are receiving. You may feel insecure about being lovable, and so you love others according to how much they love you or appeal to your sense of romance, sexuality, and compatibility. Relationships involve a constant negotiation between what you want and what your partner wants. The words that apply to love at this stage include passion, attachment, dependency, romance, mutual need, liking, and compatibility. The seed of compassion remains a seed.

We each have ideas about who we are, how the events in our lives should go, and how other people should treat us. We believe that if everything goes according to our plan, we will be safe. By the same token, anything that threatens the fulfillment of the plan is seen as an enemy. What might some of these enemies be?

         Other people who don't give us the respect we deserve.

         An uncertain future.

         Embarrassing events that prove we are not who we’ve been pretending to be.

In order to protect ourselves from the unpredictable “attacks” of these enemies, we direct our lives along a path that will allow us to be more powerful than what we fear. So we work to make money, excel, appear more intelligent — anything that will make us feel stronger than what we think has the power to punish us.

My dear, dear friends…my wonderful companions on this human journey…

I’m so glad that you’re here, and I hope that your answer to the question just above is yes, because it’s very important that you hear this: We’re experiencing something quite extraordinary on the earth right now. I’m going to give it a name here.

We are experiencing The Overhaul of Humanity.

This is not an exaggeration. This is reality. It is observable at every turn.

Yet here is something that is not so observable: Things are not as they seem.

And I think, before the world and its people get too far along this road, we all need to be aware of that.

We also need to be aware that there’s nothing to be afraid of in our future if we will all but play our role in creating it. And that role—the role we are being invited to play by Life Itself—is going to be very easy to play.

I have more that I want to share with you around all this. Let me give you a summary of everything I have come here to say:

The beginning of October holds the anniversary of my brother’s death. He committed suicide before I turned 20, on his 25th birthday. Even after all these years, I have complicated feelings about his death. I am still learning how to breathe in the wake of a suicide, and not for the reasons you might think.

Every year I think about my brother and the role he played in my life. On his birthday this year, I received acupuncture. Could this energy work help me let go of any suppressed grief or other emotions? The session included tuning forks, sound bowls and needles. The goal was for an opening to be found somewhere in my psyche, that would help release unhealthy energy trapped in my body, and mind.

One tiny needle, called a Press Tack, was left in my wrist. It was secured under breathable tape, and would last for a couple days. This little needle would possibly help me continue processing old emotions. The tiny tack caused more discomfort than the longer needles. Was this an indication of what was to come in the near future?

“That’s just the way it is.” 

It’s the biggest lie we tell ourselves – that the way things are right now is the way they will always be. But just because your life looks a certain way today, doesn’t mean it’s going to be the same tomorrow. 

The good news is, you don’t have to be a helpless victim of change, always scrambling to deal with each new challenge as it arises. You can take charge of your life and steer it in the direction you want, even when the world is in flux around you.

Today I’d like to teach you how to change your life by setting goals that will bring your vision to life – and letting nothing stop you from creating the life of your dreams. 

10 Steps to Change Your Life

Follow these steps to discover how to change your life and make your biggest dreams come true: