Creating Your Strong Life

What Question Could Get Significantly Better Results?

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For most of us, if we notice the nature of our self-talk over a short period of time, we will become aware of repetitive, self-defeating questions.

“What’s wrong with me?” “Will I ever be able to do this better?” “Why can’t I _______ (you fill in the blank)?”

One of my clients tended in several areas of her life to ask, “Why don’t I have _____?” She has now shifted to, “What does it take, who do I need to be, to have _____?”

Another client believes her circumstances are so unusual that there is no solution to what she wants. She has now started asking, “What unusual way can this come about even if I believe it can’t?” So fun. So effective.

I just recently noticed that I frequently ask myself what I need to do to bring in my minimum income each month. Guess how much income I’ve been bringing in consistently! I have now very consciously shifted the question to, “What does it take, who do I need to be, to bring in my desired income?” How much more fun is that?!?

On a lighter note, since I moved to New Mexico two years ago, I have been completely frustrated trying to get a good full moon shot. Over and over, I’ve asked myself what it would take, without doing anything differently. I didn’t realize what I meant was “who would it take?”

What Question Could Get Significantly Better Results?

Photo credit: Eric Saltmarsh, Eldorado at Santa Fe

Check out this breath-taking shot of the Hunters Moon setting beyond the Jemez Mountains west of Santa Fe taken and generously shared by my neighbor, Eric Saltmarsh. Thank goodness I wasn’t too attached to my question about how I would be the one to do this!

So, what about you? What questions do you repeatedly ask yourself that could use a significant upgrade for a whole new answer?

As always, I’d love your input and comments below.

(Excerpted from my forthcoming book, “Strong from Within: Simple perceptions and practices for transforming stress and overwhelm into clarity and purpose”)

How Do You Know If You’re Living Your True Nature?

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“A fish cannot drown in water.
A bird does not fall in air.
Each creature God made
must live in its own true nature.”
~ Mechthild of Magdeburg

For us humans, we are the only species that has the joy and the burden of discovering, remembering, our own specific true nature. We each have free will to live or not live our true natures.

We can work a job that hurts our soul or spend a lifetime wishing we had different strengths. Or, we can courageously create work that celebrates our true nature and embraces our strengths.

One of my private coaching clients has Executing and Influencing strengths in her top 5 strengths. She used to wish she had some Relationship Building strengths. Instead of wishing, we began to coach her around how to create good relationships with the strengths she does have. The work has paid off beautifully because her desire for close relationships is part of her true nature.

Another client who has mostly Strategic Thinking strengths in his top 5 strengths spent much of his life feeling bad because he was considered the “crazy thinker” in a room of doers. Today he has started a company that embraces his Strategic Thinking nature. I have no doubt that his name will one day be well-known for the huge contribution of his true nature.

And, another client hired me to mentor her to become a business coach. She would have been an excellent business coach, but her heart wasn’t in it. Today she runs a non-profit that provides addiction recovery and education. She passionately writes and speaks about this issue that is so meaningful to her.

How Do You Know If You’re Living Your True Nature?
Ah, to live our true nature as effortlessly as these little loves! Might we be over-working it?

So how do we each know our own true nature?

By paying attention to what lights you up, what energizes you, what engages you.

When do you feel most alive? In what situations do you make contributions that feel effortless? Or that require focus and effort, yet feel meaningful and fulfilling to you?

When do you feel most you? When do you have the sense, “I was born for this”? When does time stand still for you? Or fly by? When do you feel connected – body, mind, heart and spirit?

How might the world shift if we all were living our true natures? Oh my goodness, that question gets me out of bed in the morning . . .

I’d love to hear your experiences . . . post them below in the comments section . . .

Might you like coaching
to discover, remember and live your true nature?

Let’s have a conversation to see if you and your situation would be a good fit for Strong from Within coaching. My gift to you.

I keep a few openings in my schedule for these important conversations – Access my calendar here now.

(Excerpted from my forthcoming book, “Strong from Within: Simple perceptions and practices for transforming stress and overwhelm into clarity and purpose”)

How Do You Restore Inner Peace? In Just a Few Minutes?

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You may not realize this, but chances are good you already know the answer for you!

Let me tell you my answer, and then let’s explore yours . . .

A few days ago, several challenges occurred on top of each other, minutes before I was to meet with my next client on the phone. Instead of attempting to resolve all of them in that time, I instinctively went outside and laid on the ground.

I am still astonished by how quickly Mother Earth restores my inner peace even though I have known this since I was a little kid. And, I love that my job requires me to be in a state of inner peace!

During those few minutes of laying on the ground, anger dissolved into love and open-heartedness around one situation. A second challenge became easily resolvable. I found kind wording for dissolving a third challenge. And, the exhaustion I had felt disappeared.

All that in less than 10 minutes and I was ready for my client a few minutes ahead of schedule.

That’s how I restore my inner peace.

At some point, this conversation comes up with almost all of my clients.

One realizes that walking her dog, even just around the block, almost always does the trick. Another puts on loud music and dances like crazy for 3 to 5 minutes. Yet another asks himself, “What is the Big Boy response here?” Years ago, one of my clients took her kids to the park. Now that they are growing and grown, she goes for a run in the park.

So, what about you?

For many of us, it’s a physical thing. For a few, it’s some kind of mental challenge. For others, engaging in or reading something that touches their heart or stirs their creativity. For some, it involves extending kindness or care to another.

I challenge each of us to make a written list of our top 3.

How Do You Restore Inner Peace? In Just a Few Minutes?
In addition to laying on the ground, I find sitting on the ground and stacking rocks brings me back to inner peace.

Mine:

  • Laying or sitting on the ground.
  • Shaking out every part of my body to an energizing song.
  • Singing along at the top of my lungs with one of my favorite songs, currently “You’re So Vain” by Carly Simon.

Yours?
Post them below in the comments section . . .

(Excerpted from my forthcoming book, “Strong from Within: Simple perceptions and practices for transforming crisis into clarity and purpose”)

How to Free Ourselves from Innocently Self-Created Prisons

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Last week I posed the question, “Do we need to know our purpose to be happy?”

This week, I had planned on sharing the process of learning my own purpose. In light of the controversial sentencing in the Stanford rape case and the tragedy in Orlando, it feels more relevant to share how my purpose might relieve some suffering.

Escaping

My purpose: Inspiring and urging us to freedom from our innocently self-created prisons so that we may be more fully ourselves and make our unique contribution to the planet.

Let’s back up for a moment. What is an innocently self-created prison? Our own thinking that causes our own suffering.

Maybe we are hating the “haters.” Maybe we feel victimized. Maybe we engage in us and them thinking. Maybe we feel less than. Or hopeless. And, the list goes on . . .

I found it heart-wrenching to read the long letter from the survivor in the rape case. And, I read the whole letter because I wanted to bear witness to this courageous young woman stepping out of the victim prison into making a unique, impactful contribution to the planet.

What innocently self-created prisons might you notice you’ve created this week?

I faced this question head-on in 1994 when my 25-year-old boyfriend died of a morphine overdose by his own hand. My shock and grief was so intense that I wished I had died with him.

At one point fairly early in my grief, I had a clear and lucid moment in which I knew that his death would either take me under or make me stronger. I consciously chose life.

I recognized I could bring to the planet something from him. In thinking about his greatest attributes, I realized that he was the most unconditionally loving person I knew. I decided in that moment to be more loving myself from that day forward.

Today, I recognize that love is needed in both these tragedies.

It would be so easy to judge, blame and make wrong. And, it’s almost as easy to see the self-created prisons that led to these crimes. It’s also probably easier to focus on outrage than it is to step out of a self-created righteous prison to make our own unique contribution right now . . .

Who Is the Miraculous

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I am a fierce, creative, powerful and grateful being
Who is the miraculous.

I am the strength, vision and vibration of my dream.

I allow the notion of unworthiness to drop away.
There is no such thing.
Worthiness is inherent by nature of existence.

I know the Divine.
I know my own Divinity.
I know Pure Potentiality
which I shape with my Divine authorship.

Spider Web

I know the miracle of me.
I know the way of magic.

I know my ability to hear and notice
when magic speaks.
I allow the magic to flow through me.

When I resist, second-guess or deny
my Divinity, my magic,
I thwart or block my natural, abundant flow.

When I align with and allow my Divinity,
all nature of magic and miracles
Unfold naturally and consistently.

I am the strength, vision and vibration of my dream.

I am a fierce, creative, powerful and grateful being
Who is the miraculous.

(Excerpted from my forthcoming book, “Strong from Within: Simple perceptions and practices for returning to the joy of you”)

How Might Both/And Encourage a Rich Life?

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“No wholeness will be possible for you while you compartmentalize your life into designated pieces giving yourself time for work and time for leisure and seeing them not as the same thing. Life is life. Life is. As love is.

Life is service to God. God is service to life. You are God in life. Thus you are both life and service to life, both God and service to God. All of the vast universe was created the same: to live and to serve life, to be of God and be of service to God. To be served and to serve. To be provided for and to provide. To have needs met and to meet needs. This circular nature of the universe leaves no one unattended.”

~ Mari Perron, First Receiver
    A Course of Love

One of my favorite coaching distinctions is Both/And instead of Either/Or. And, lately, it seems like much of my life is calling me to embrace All. Last week I wrote about embracing both “good” and “bad” and everything in between.

This week, A Course of Love is speaking to me loudly and clearly. I am both God and service to God. I am both living and serving life. I am both provided for and providing.

To the Infinite Wholeness of Life!
To the Infinite Wholeness of Life!

I’ve come a long way since the black and white thinking of my teens and early adult years. I’m grateful.

Last week, as I noticed how embracing good, bad and in-between caused me to relax, so too does embracing myself as God and in service to God.

I have less to sift through, less to figure out, less to try to control. I feel less pressured and more accepting. It feels amazing.

What about you? What are you hearing in this? What is showing up in your life right now?

(Excerpted from my forthcoming book, “Strong from Within: Simple perceptions and practices for returning to the joy of you”)

Find Your Strongest Life: Strong from Within Tools

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How might the world shift if we all knew and owned our own divinity?

How would your life shift if you knew, truly knew, that you are the creator of your life, the author of your story? What might you create differently than how your life is now?

What if we could devote a minute or two minutes or five minutes a day to begin making those shifts in our lives?!?

I love the way a meditation or affirmative prayer instantly changes my focus and energy. And, I am a bit impatient by nature, so I love working with simple tools that help me shift in minutes.

Yet, I found most centering tools and meditations are a minimum of 15 minutes and often as much as an hour, so I decided to create my own tools.

Today, I am so excited to share them with you!

I call this first one, Source, a reality reminder. May it remind you of your own power – strong from within . . .

Oak Tree

Listen to the 1-minute audio here.

[audio:http://annstrong.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Source_realityreminder.mp3]

Or read or follow along with the printed words below.

Source

There is One Power, One Presence; the Source of all existence.

Pure Potentiality. Pure Energy. Pure, unformed, raw material.

Everything in existence is formed from this One Source.
I am formed from this One Source.

My thoughts, beliefs and emotions form my reality,
the nature of my existence.
I am the source of the nature of my existence.

What I experience “out there,” in the world first took shape inside of me.
As I believe, so it is.

I am the source of the nature of my existence.
Each moment, I choose the nature of my existence.

What would I love to choose?
What would I love to choose?

If this is valuable to you, I’m so excited to share a package of three tools with you:

Strong from Within, 1 – The Quick Audio Package
(3 recordings)
All recordings by Ann Strong

  1. You Are a Fountain of Blessings
    5-minute meditation
  2. Divine Authority
    2-minute affirmative prayer
  3. Source
    1-minute reality reminder

I found a wonderful platform from which to share this package – and you get to name the price you’d like to pay!

CLICK HERE for further details, to purchase and for immediate download.

I’d love your feedback! If you purchase the package and use the tools for a few days, I would love to know how things shift for you . . .

Post comments and insights below . . .

Evoking the Best of You: Activated by Martin Luther King, Jr

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Today is Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday. Almost every year at this time I write about how he has influenced me.

While taking my Strengths Strategy Coaching certification course last year, my trainer and mentor DeAnna used him as a shining example of the best of the StrengthsFinder Activator strength. With Activator as my #4 strength, I felt a renewed sense of our kinship and a renewed commitment to Activate people in a way that makes this world a better place.

Honoring Martin Luther King, Jr for activating us to greater love for all people.

Honoring Martin Luther King, Jr for activating
us to greater love for all people.

His dream involved nonviolence, justice and equality, social and political reform.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr

My dream involves each of us as individuals dissolving the old patterns and habits that bind us. Deeply connecting with and honoring ourselves so that we can fully express ourselves. For me, Martin Luther King Jr serves as a brilliant example of fully expressing himself.

“I fiercely hold the vision of this person in front of me loving and valuing themselves no matter what, so that they may offer the world the one-of-a-kind gift of their self-expression.”
– Ann Strong

What about you? What is your dream? How can I Activate you to take your next step in the direction of that dream that only you can fulfill?

Thank you Martin Luther King, Jr.

Post your comments and insights below.

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My book, “Thriving Work” is now available
on Kindle at Amazon for just $3.99:
Click here to order

Strong from Within

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Bringing alignment to the
internal struggle.

So many inner voices.
All with ideas and gifts
And needs.

Often competing.
Judging.
Criticizing.

Bringing alignment to the
internal struggle.

Listening.
Allowing.
Appreciating.

All.

Orchestrating an
internal symphony.

Ah, to be strong from within like the deeply-rooted tree who also reaches toward the sky...

Ah, to be strong from within like the deeply-rooted tree
who also reaches toward the sky…

Rich.
Complex.
Moving.
Beautiful.
One-of-a-kind.

Fully You.
Radiantly alive.
Gloriously messy.

Bringing alignment to the
internal struggle.

Strong from Within.
One-of-a-kind.
Fully You.

Post your comments and insights below.

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Announcing the winner of the solo retreat in Santa Fe
(A $1900 value)!!!!!
BRENDA NEWBERRY

Special mention to:
MARY MCHENRY
JANET BERGIN
who also posted more than 10 comments on the blog.

Brenda, Mary and Janet, watch your in-box in the next couple of days for an email from me . . .

Also, thank you to:
Gina Garris
Eleanor Grannis
Cinny Mills
Stephanie West
for posting comments on the blog.

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My book, “Thriving Work” is now available
on Kindle at Amazon for just $3.99:
Click here to order

Find Your Strongest Life: What Pattern Wants to Be Dissolved, Released?

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Our Winter Solstice new moon brought us the opportunity to release old, unproductive patterns and step into our bigger truth and potential! (Thank you, Nancy Ogren.)

What pattern wants to be dissolved, released from your life?

Mine involves the faulty thinking that I can avoid abandonment by being attached. What I’ve noticed: this tendency to be attached keeps my focus outside myself. And, the more I’ve been attached, the more I’ve felt abandoned – the very thing I was trying to avoid.

I cannot be abandoned if I don't abandon me. How simple and clear is that?!?

I cannot be abandoned if I don’t abandon me. 
How simple and clear is that?!?

I wrote a short poem that gave me my key to freedom.

Without Anyone

I thought I had to hold
On to you
Because it was better than
Being without anyone.

Refusing to notice
That
I was there
All along.

Oh my goodness, what an immediate and dramatic shift! I can’t be abandoned if I don’t abandon me by running off in search of someone who won’t abandon me!!!

I am loving being here with me, for me. Ah, the consistency. The immediacy!

I have done a lot of work around abandonment over the last 30 years. And, it had significantly lessened it’s grip on me. Yet, not until now did I realize that me staying with me radically reduces my suffering, regardless of whether others stay or go.

I’ve now created a daily practice and an “in the moment” practice to develop a new groove to replace that well-worn attachment rut . . .

So, what about you? What old pattern wants to dissolve, be released?

Post your comments and insights below.

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Extended: still time to win between now and Jan 6th!!

Win a solo retreat in Santa Fe (A $1900 value)!!!!!
(Or we can do it on the phone if traveling doesn’t fit for you.)

(Read about the retreats to see if one speaks to you:
http://annstrong.com/retreats/)

We have been hard at work for months and are so happy to share the new beautiful, spacious website!
http://annstrong.com/

I was sad because we were not able to bring the comments on the blog to the new site when we made the move. I have figured out a way to remedy that! Bribery!!!

Between now and Jan 6, 2015, if you will take the time to look at the blog and make a comment on 10 or more of the blog posts, I will enter you into a drawing for a facilitated solo retreat with me in New Mexico.
Read all about the retreats at: http://annstrong.com/retreats/

We will announce the winner of the retreat in the Jan 7th newsletter . . .

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My book, “Thriving Work” is now available
on Kindle at Amazon for just $3.99:
Click here to order