Your Top Ten
September 26, 2009
Your Top Ten: Principals that guide your life—your thoughts and actions.
When life throws you lemons, don’t even bother to squeeze them and make lemonade, just put on your armor and deflect them immediately, moving onto the next opportunity in your life. Let me suggest a vision of armor that is never removed from your body, but is a part of you—a flexible shield that cannot be detached and simply serves to bounce things off you that do not nourish, sustain or help you excel in any way.
How do you create your armor? An enjoyable way is to produce your Top 10 Principals list. It’s almost like your personal Ten Commandments. How do you begin to build this list, you ask? One way is to take some time and think about those things that have easily penetrated your armor. They caused you to get angry, dwell in depression for too long, or act in ways that are the antithesis of your being.
Here are a few examples…
- Let’s say you are a very competitive person and you happen to get down on yourself when others in your team achieve success and recognition more quickly than you do. A powerful principle that you can adopt (which I absolutely love and use for myself) is: “I am Always, and in All Ways, better than I think I am.” By employing this principal each time a situation like this comes up, you will be more inclined to (before and after as well) focus on your own initiatives and your own success. It also will most likely be easier for you to be genuinely happy for the success of your co-worker and take that opportunity to learn something from his/her achievement.
- Let’s use another work example. You are completely overwhelmed! And, each time your boss or someone else asks you to tackle another project or task it adds a new level of stress to your day. If one of your principals is: “I am in complete control of my schedule and my life.” How do you think you’d feel then if caught in this scenario? How much less anxious would you be?
- Finally, let’s use one that many individuals without a job right now may be experiencing. You are an established professional with much to offer any organization. In fact, your skills are as such that you may be able to work in a different industry or position because your skills are transferable. However, it’s been months and you just can’t land a job. You have given up and you just don’t believe in your abilities or yourself at this point. How about if this were your principal: “I have everything within me that I need to be successful, and the universe/God, etc., brings me the assistance I need at the precise moment I need it.” Did your spirit lift just now after reading this? Mine sure did!
So, by now, you should get a clear idea of what a principal can be for you. It can feel like a value (integrity, trust, patience, etc.), an affirmation (like example 1), or it can be a Universal Truth (whatever that may be for you—like one of the Ten Commandments). There are no rules. These are yours and you can create them as you like.
I’m not going to say that creating your 10 will be easy. In fact, it shouldn’t be. You must get to a point that you know yourself SO WELL that there is no question that you desire to live your life by these principals.
Who are you and what do you live by? Who do you most desire to be? What are you waiting for to begin living in this fashion—with such resilience that those around you have no choice but to feel, see, hear the difference? Wow, that’s exciting!
I was flipping through O’s Big Book of Happiness, and I read Oprah’s “What I know for sure”, when she was describing how embarrassed and betrayed she felt when one of her family members sold her “secret” of abuse and pregnancy to the National Enquirer. She felt like the entire world would see her in a different way, that she would no longer be respected. It was one of her principals, however, that got her out of this black hole, the one that states— “When you know who you are and what you stand for, you stand in wisdom.”
Know yourself.
Know what you stand for.
Be enlightened, and light the way for yourself and others.
Create your Top Ten, read them daily, and stand in wisdom.
Are you talking to me?
January 30, 2009
Each of us has unique talents and gifts that we can share with the world. One gift that is found in all of us, however, is intuition.
Intuition is defined as the “instinctive and unconscious knowing without deduction or reasoning.” Simply put, it is when you get a gut feeling about something without knowing why or without any evidence to back it up.
Some of us have a very keen intuition—we feel it and we follow it often, because we’ve learned to listen to it and trust it. Others of us can’t really pin-point when we are getting an intuitive “vibe” or explain what we feel. Truth be told…it just takes a lot of practice to identify it and learn how to use it to your benefit in daily life.
One of the strongest intuitive feelings I have ever experienced happened in middle school. My sister and I would usually hang around after school for a while with other friends until our mother was able to pick us up. This one afternoon, however, the older sister of one of my friends came by and asked us if she could take us to get ice cream. Pretty harmless, right? My mother would not be coming for a while, so why not go? Well, almost the minute I got into the car I got a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach, I almost felt numb, and the thought that came to my mind was—“Don’t go…something bad is going to happen.”
Well, needless to say, I did not listen. And, if you would have snapped a photo of me in that car, you would have seen a young girl with a frightened look on her face, crouched down into the seat as low as she could go. It was a rainy day and the roads were wet, and within 10 minutes of leaving school “it” happened. Yes, we were in a car accident with a very large truck that sent the car into a spin on the wet road. We survived with only some sprains, scratches and bruises, and even managed to get back to school in a taxi cab before my mom showed up.
I was grateful, of course, for not having been seriously injured, but I was even more grateful for experiencing that very deep knowing—or intuition—that whenever I feel it again I know better to listen.
Another intuition I feel very frequently is related to my children and their health. I am sure most mothers can attest to the same types of feelings!! I don’t take my children to the doctor or hospital frequently, but sometimes, you just know that something is up. It’s not just a cold or a tummy ache, but it’s more. When I was a new mother I did not trust my intuition much and took my son to the doctor a bit too frequently. But within a few months of getting the hang of the “mother thing”, I did begin to trust my intuition. And, I must admit that about 98% of the time that my gut tells me something is wrong, I am right. I don’t even think twice any more…it’s off to the doctor or hospital I go!
Now, it is very possible that your intuition can be stronger in certain circumstances, especially when related to someone you love, like your spouse or children. I know this is very true for me. We can take those strong instances, though, and remember the feeling, because that same feeling, although not as strong in other situations, can still be detected and applied. It means being very aware.
This past week I was coaching a client around an issue; a decision she could not make. When I asked her to tell me how she would feel if she made one decision versus another her reaction was incredible. It was not her verbal reaction, but the physical reaction that she explained to me. In her words… “OMG…this feeling is very familiar. When I see myself doing this it is like I am making the same mistake I did years ago.” Her intuition was clearly letting her know that this was not the way to go. If she hadn’t taken the time to imagine how she would feel about making the decision, she might have taken the path she was used to that would have caused her more pain down the road.
Intuition is something that can grow stronger in us as we learn how to identify it. It is also a skill that we can use daily to help us make decisions—from simple ones to complex ones. You can check in with your intuition when hiring some one, when making an important purchase (like a car), when deciding with whom to spend your time, with investing your money, when deciding how to change your career, etc. No one knows what is best for you than you do! Practice listening to and feeling what your body is trying to tell you. You may be pleasantly surprised and truly enjoy the benefits.
Here are some simple steps to developing your intuition:
*Take a few minutes before any decision to think about your options and see what feelings arise. Are the feelings dark or light? Energizing or debilitating? What feels better? What feels right?
*Take a risk and don’t reason! The minute you bring reason into the picture you’ll talk yourself out of your core feeling or thought. Jump right into action and evaluate the results later. Was the risk worth it? Were you right on?
*If you get a gut feeling or thought when speaking with someone, share it with them to see if you are correct. You may have saved them time, money or energy!
*Keep an Intuition Journal and keep track of what you feel, hear, smell, taste, etc. You will learn quickly how your body communicates with you.
I’d love for you to share any intuitions that you have had that have either worked out or not. How did you learn from the experience?
Here are a couple of great quotes I found about intuition, both serious and humorous:
“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself!”
-Actor Alan Alda
“I feel there are two people inside of me—me and my intuition. If I go against her, she’ll screw me every time, and if I follow her, we get along quite nicely.”
-Actress Kim Basinger
Go within and find your intuition…embrace her/him…enjoy the results!
Monique
Illumined Life Leadership 