How Do You Experience Your Unique Divinity?

What if the whole of your life was a contribution to the planet? Not only all the things you do each day, but also your very beingness, your essence, the specificity of your energy . . .

What if the more you engaged with whatever energizes you, then the more delightful energy you’d add to the planet?

What if when you were engaged with whatever drains or depletes you, you allowed that to be okay? Then you’d add more acceptance and allowing to the planet.

How Do You Experience Your Unique Divinity?
Remembering the Light that is always present, even behind ominous storm clouds.

What if you knew, really knew, that every breath you take matters?

If you’re inspired, I’d love to hear how this speaks to you . . .

Join the conversation ~ comment below.

Who Do I Need to Be to Bring This into Reality?

“The shortest route between you and all you desire involves asking yourself daily or moment-to-moment, ‘Who do I need to be to bring what I’m committed to into reality?'”
From the book Thriving Work: 90 days of daily practice for transforming you and your coaching, consulting or healing business
By Ann Strong

When I wrote this 7 years ago, I wasn’t consciously aware that my deepest desire had only one answer.

Who do I need to be to bring all that I desire into reality?
Love Embodied / In Union with God / Christ Incarnate.

I don’t need to be smarter, faster or jump higher. I do need to be in this world, but not of it. I do need to express the Divinity of me, rather than allowing my humanness (read:ego) to run the show.

Who Do I Need to Be to Bring This into Reality?
Ah, to be so effortlessly fully myself as these guys…

When I wrote Thriving Work in 2011, I felt happy to experience moments of my Divinity and didn’t expect more. Today, I’m committed to more.

I’ve been reading, re-reading and studying with three friends the book, The Way of Mastery – Part One: The Way of the Heart for almost a year now.

To come to know ourselves as Love Embodied, it gives us four keys to the Kingdom: desire, intention, allowance and surrender.

1. Desire
To be all that God created me to be.

2. Intention
To focus on that desire daily.

3. Allowance
To see everything as an opportunity to heal whatever stands in the way of me being – consistently – the Presence of Love.

4. Surrender
To live “Thy Will, not my will.”

“Commitment is nothing more than a deliberate decision that something will be so.”
The Way of Mastery – Part One: The Way of the Heart Shanti Christo Foundation

And so it is! I’m committed to living Love Embodied and continuing to work through whatever trips me up between where I am in a moment and living Love Embodied.

I’d love to hear from you. What would you love to bring into reality? Who do you need to be to bring that into reality?

Join the conversation – comment below.

How You Think about Life Actually Becomes Your Life

Awhile back, as I was working with a client around the growing pains of her business, she noticed that she’d come to accept that there wasn’t any time for her personal life. Because that was her thinking, her life had become putting out one fire after another.

This alerted me to look more closely at my own thinking. For most of the past year, I’ve been telling myself that “the world” is too much for me. As a sensitive empath, it’s challenging for me to feel all the chaos. My solution had been isolating myself from the world more and more.

Recently, I realized I could shift my thinking to something more life-affirming.

I have this wonderful job in which I get to support people in proactively creating their lives and their work. My clients are willing to look within themselves and courageously create what’s important to them. It’s such a privilege to facilitate their transformations.

While I still don’t get out into the world much, I do feel better about my life because I’m thinking about how I AM contributing rather than what drains me. I’ve also given myself permission to spend more time alone in nature, reminding myself, yet again, that it restores me. I don’t need to judge it.

How You Think about Life Actually Becomes Your Life
When I think about this land and this rainbow as benevolent friends,
I feel happier and more accepting of my life as it is.

So, what about you? What have you been thinking about? What do you notice about how that has become your life?

Post your comments, experiences and insights below…

Revelation

I see with new eyes.

I see through the eyes
of relationship and union.

I close the eyes
of separation and judgment.

I live in the expectancy
of revelation –

expecting the purpose
of each experience
to be revealed –

as I recognize that I exist
in union with the
Source and Cause
of revelation.

Revelation

I see through the eyes
of relationship and union.

I see with new eyes.

As always, post your comments, experiences and insights below …

What If You Have the Key to Your Freedom?

“So oftentimes it happens that we live our lives in chains
That we never even know we have the key . . .”
~ Lyrics from Already Gone, Eagles

Earlier today one of my clients sent me these lyrics because they reminded her of some of our coaching conversations. The Eagles were my sister’s favorite band when we shared a room in the mid seventies. I’ve probably heard that song a thousand times and never heard those lyrics on their own.

It’s strange that I had never picked out those specific lyrics because they are meaningful to me. The foundation of my life purpose involves helping us free ourselves from our innocently self-created prisons. Thank you Eagles for planting seeds in my teenage psyche!

So what is this key?

Over and over again, as I grow and evolve and as my clients grow and evolve, I see that the less involved we are with the content of our thoughts, the more free we are.

When we recognize there is actually a witness to all these thoughts – and that we are that witness – we begin to realize we may not be as crazy as we have feared. Indeed, we tend to have some crazy thinking, but we are not that. We are the witness of that.

And, when we recognize that we can choose to not engage with trying to take care of all the problems that seem to be in our thoughts, we have freed up a whole bunch of time and energy for living.

What If You Have the Key to Your Freedom?
Ah, to living!

Imagine if we never again tried to answer the question, “I wonder what he is thinking about me?” Or, if we simply noticed that we were once again upset for being upset but allowed ourselves be okay with it. Nothing to fix. Or, we started to rehearse what we were going to say and realized we didn’t need to rehearse.

So, what about you? What if you are not your thoughts? What if you don’t have to fix the problems of your thoughts? What if you don’t have to attempt to control every aspect of your existence? What if you notice that your true identity is part of All That Is? And that life is organizing itself beautifully without addressing all that repetitive thinking inside you?

What a glorious key to our freedom . . .

(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?

“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”)

What Happens If We Keep Our Hearts Open?

Do not let anything that happens in life be important enough that you’re willing to close your heart . . . Nothing, ever, is worth closing your heart over.
Michael Singer
From the book, “The Untethered Soul”

Recently, I dated a guy for a few weeks. It was an incredibly challenging relationship. We often got along beautifully and had a great time together. And, at the same time, we both kept getting triggered in deep, painful ways.

I’ve dated a lot, I’ve been in many relationships and I’ve never experienced anything like this. Neither of us knew what to make of it.

At one point, when I couldn’t take any more triggering, I sent him a short, “No need to go any further” text. A couple of days later, I realized there might be value in being more mature and less reactive in my communication.

I called him and we agreed to have a closing conversation a couple of days later. We met in a park under a magnificent tree. One of the many things we have in common: a deep connection with trees.

What Happens If We Keep Our Hearts Open?

Maybe the tree worked his magic on us.

We had a wonderful, heartfelt conversation about closing the romantic chapter in the story of us and continuing the connection of our friendship. We sat and talked under that tree for two hours.

I felt strangely neutral. I came away from our time together with a deep appreciation for each of us and our connection. And totally clear that we’d made a great decision.

The next day, I read the Michael Singer quote above. It startled me. Maybe I’ve become more willing to keep my heart open regardless of circumstances?!?

So, what happens if we keep our hearts open? For me, it feels life-affirming, empowering and kind of like how it’s suppose to be . . .

I’d love to hear your experiences . . . 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 Does Being Present in the Moment Vaporize Fear?

“You’ve been walking in circles, searching. Don’t drink by the water’s edge. Throw yourself in. Become the water. Only then will your thirst end.”
– Jeanette Berson

When we throw ourselves in and become the water, we are completely present. And when we are completely present, we have no fear.

AnnStrongblogpost081116
What does it take to become the water?

Fear lives in the past through regret. Fear lives in the future through uncertainty. Fear lives in attempting to control others and outcomes.

My clients often question me about being present when they don’t like the present. It’s such a great question because we as humans spend a lot of time attempting to avoid what we don’t like.

A vivid experiential answer I have for that comes from when I used to have debilitating migraines. I spent a lot of time fighting them, doing anything I could to distract myself from the pain.

When I’d exhausted all those distractions and myself, I would finally surrender. What I found in those present moments after the surrender: this sweet, tender way of being there with me, for me.

Every time, it seemed so strange to me to be relishing being with myself while at the same time experiencing excruciating pain. I no longer feared the pain. I accepted it and I stayed with myself through it – cherishing myself as the beloved.

Ah, to be the water. So very similar to being the migraine. Isn’t that fascinating?!?

I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences . . .

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

How Have You Forgotten Yourself as the Creator of Life?

I’ve had many opportunities in the past few weeks to forget that I am the creator of Life. I’ve been working overtime trying to figure out how to resolve, work through, fix, heal or eradicate certain situations.

When I finally turned all of it over to meditation, this is what I heard, “The time of ‘figuring it out’ is over. Do you see that you are not in charge AND you are the creator of Life? ‘In charge’ is about fear of the past and trying to manipulate the future to correct the past.”

“Instead, you know that Life is created in the present. As you are present to Life, you are the creator of Life, you are in relationship with Life, you are receiving Life.”

Well, that was a clear distinction for me! As I understand it, I need to refrain from trying to manipulate what is, but rather to be present to, in relationship with and receive what is.

How Have You Forgotten Yourself as the Creator of Life?
Ah, to be present to, be in relationship with and receive this creation. That’s Life!

How does that make me the creator of Life? I have a strong felt sense of it and I find it hard to articulate it.

Here’s what I’m seeing in this moment. When I try to manipulate, I’m completely missing what I’ve already created. When I’m in relationship with what I’ve created, I’m at peace because I’m not fighting it. When I receive what I’ve created, I experience the beauty, mystery and meaning of the creation.

Even when it’s super uncomfortable and not what I think I wanted.

It’s easy to know I’m the creator of Life when I love what I create. And, I’m finding that the more I am willing to receive what is regardless of my feelings about what is, the more I experience knowing I am the creator of Life.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences . . .

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

How to Create a Stress-Free Zone in Our Lives

I learned earlier this week that my car needs a new engine. And, I learned this the way I learn many things – experientially.

Sitting on the side of the road waiting for AAA, I realized that, as we always do, I had a choice. I didn’t have the choice I wished I had – choosing my car to get back on the road, drive to Whole Foods and then drive home.

I did have the choice of where to focus my thoughts and attention. My human inclination was to think of all of the things I should have done differently in the past to have created a different future.

And then I heard, clear as could be, “we spend our lives trying to manipulate the future to correct the past.” In that moment, as I felt the cool evening breeze coming in the car window, I realized the insanity of that.

How to Create a Stress-Free Zone in Our Lives
How rich are our lives when we truly receive the moment, moment by moment?

We have the opportunity in any moment, no matter how much we assess the situation as “bad,” to receive the gifts of the present.

When we are willing to let go of our thoughts about the past or the future, we create a stress-free zone in the present. When we are willing to focus on what is right in front of us, we don’t need to manipulate or change anything. How freeing is that?

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