“I don’t want to gain the whole world and lose my soul.”
– Toby Mac

These lyrics struck a chord for me the first time I heard them.  Toby Mac might have been talking about losing himself in fame and fortune.  For so many of my clients, I notice the tendency to get caught up in a never-ending “To Do” list which pushes out consistent spiritual nourishment that they know they “should” get to.

Since my life tends to become an unmanageable mess without consistent spiritual practice, I don’t try to get by with lip service much anymore!  One of my favorite aspects of making my spiritual foundation first: even when life seems dizzy-ingly complex and gaining the whole world feels like an enormous burden, I can feel peaceful in the eye of the storm.

If you find yourself in the “I should meditate for 30 minutes every morning” camp and you aren’t, would you be willing to consider baby steps?  Daily, consistent baby steps can move you back onto sane ground IF you stick with them.

 

 

 

 

 

Soul nourishment – pausing in a moment to be truly present to the bounty of you and all that surrounds you; breathing it in; feeling the Earth beneath you . . .

Would you be willing to commit to five minutes of mediation before you get in the car in the morning?  Or to conscious, long, deep breathing when you are caught in traffic?  Or to reading a prayer each night before you go to sleep?  Say a heart-felt blessing before you eat?  Take 30 seconds to drink in a gorgeous sunset? Set a clear intention before a tough conversation? Post you most important top values on your fridge and read them once a day with new eyes . . .

The possibilities for this list are endless.  What helps you be present to your precious soul in this very moment?

Wow, maybe I’ll write a book, “Nourishing Your Soul, 20 Seconds at a Time.”  Thank you, Toby Mac.

Recently, I wished I’d been more patient during a personal conversation.  The next day, one of my clients wished she’d handled a client situation better.

Those two scenarios made me realize why so many coaches tell me they aren’t sure if they’ll coach well enough or if they have enough confidence to really help clients.

Which took me back to a confidence-building conversation with my former coach Stephen McGhee.  He helped me coach so much more boldly when he told me that when I thought I had messed up with a client, that I had also created the opportunity to make the relationship even stronger by repairing it really well.  He planted the seed for me that we could have a better relationship after I cleaned up my “mistake.”

I have had the opportunity several times since that conversation with Stephen to make stronger relationships a reality! 🙂

So, what does it look like to clean up the mess and make the relationship better?

Start with a clear commitment.  What is your commitment in this situation?  If we are committed to looking good, saving face, covering up, glossing over or giving excuses, we make the situation worse.  If we lash out or blame the other person, we may severely damage the relationship.

So, how about a commitment to honesty, transparency, empathy and intimacy in a conversation to create a stronger relationship?  

Once you become solid in your commitment, the specifics of how you clean up the “mess” will naturally come to you.  As you choose what to say, you simply ask yourself, “does this serve taking care of my ego or am I being honest and transparent about my part?  Am I listening with empathy or just waiting for my turn?  Am I creating intimacy or defending my side?”

Once you experientially know that you can create a stronger relationship even when you mess up, you will have a greater confidence to invite people to coach with you and to brilliantly coach them through even the toughest situation.

If you’d like more in-depth work with creating empowering commitments, read my new book, Thriving Work: 90 days of daily practice for transforming you and your coaching, consulting or healing business. 

Recently, grief has come to visit three of my clients and two of my sisters.  I myself am well acquainted with loss and grief and have found comfort in the piece below.

That being said, surrendering to what is soothes the soul when we experience the small, daily “losses” as well as the more challenging death of a loved one.

Read on if you feel any frustration right now about not signing a client, the number on your bathroom scale, not feeling heard by your mother, taking a remark from your teenager personally or having another misunderstanding with your husband . . .

As we surrender to what is, we create space for receiving the gifts of what we had previously thought unacceptable.

Surrendering to What Is

Very little seems to be
as I believe I would like it to be.

I’ve resisted,
I’ve railed against it,
I’ve cried out, playing the victim.

All of which
has caused me more misery
than the original circumstances
I thought I didn’t like.

So, now I surrender to what is.

I accept
what I had previously considered unacceptable
because I choose peace within.

I choose to be the creator of my life
rather than the victim of circumstances.

I acknowledge in this moment
that circumstances are just as they are –
neither good nor bad, neither right nor wrong.

Today, I surrender to what is,
choosing to consciously create my paradise.

As I surrender, I recognize that
my power as the creator of my life
resides in my response to life.
My thoughts and my stories;
They create my heaven or my hell.

Today I choose my thoughts carefully,
Choosing life–affirming thoughts.

Today, I rewrite my stories
to uplift and uphold a life I love
rather than recreate nightmares of the past.

Today, I surrender to what is,
And then I consciously choose thoughts and stories
That create my heaven right now, here on earth.

Excerpted from my new book, Thriving Work: 90 days of daily practice for transforming you and your coaching, consulting or healing business. To read a chapter as my gift and to buy the book, please visit:
http://www.annstrong.com/thriving-work-book/

As a business coach I have a coach.  And she has a coach.  And she has a coach.  And I have clients who are coaches.  Some of them also have clients who are coaches. 

We all invest in these services.

Hmmm . . . I’ve been told by some coaches that it sounds a bit like a pyramid scam.  Is it?

Or, do we hire coaches ourselves because we know something that others are only beginning to learn?  You can read more here and decide yourself.

Let’s take a look.  What is the power of the business coaching pyramid?

Partnership Collaboration
Where two or more are gathered in my name . . .  The gift of a powerful Mastermind alliance.

Energy Activation
The co-creative process at it’s best.  The gift of creating something from nothing.

Vision Holding
Even when I’m discouraged or feel I’m drowning in the details, my coach holds a vision of the best of me as I hold that vision for my clients.  The gift of keeping my focus on the positive.

Blind Spot Sighting
I see for my clients what they cannot see on their own.  My coach sees for me what I cannot see on my own.  The gift of greater vision to make greater choices.

Natural Accountability
I keep more of my commitments to myself when I share them with my coach.  The gift of consistently growing myself and my business.

Resource Availability
I use processes, forms and resources that my coach shares with me.  I make them my own, create more on my own and then share them with my clients.  The gift of not having to recreate the wheel.

Re-Minding
I am often stunned by how my own thoughts – both conscious and un-earthed unconscious thoughts – prove erroneous and life-draining.  The gift of a facilitated process for choosing better thoughts that create my better reality.

Divinity Stewardship
I tend to over-identify with the human part of me and under-acknowledge my divinity.  My coach champions and reminds me of the best of me.  The gift of remembering to live and work more and more from my best self.

Fun, Juicy Connection
Working on our own and running our own businesses tends to feel a bit lonely and isolating.  The gift of the coaching relationship, which creates this wonderful intimate, fun, connected, sacred and playful arena in which to grow!

Coaching beyond the Pyramid
In addition to playing in this delightful coaching pyramid, I also have clients who are not coaches.  I absolutely love witnessing how coaching transforms them.

My client Emma recently said it best.  She told me, “It’s slowly sinking in that I have control over my destiny.”  The coaching pyramid has helped her realize that she can create (and is creating) her life and work the way she truly desires.  

She bakes the most delicious cupcakes on the planet.  We are so fortunate that coaching has given her a way to continue to dream up and put out more and more of these delicious morsels, making the world a far yummier and happier place!

For the best cupcakes in Denver, get to The Shoppe today! My favorite special this month: Wakka Flame. My all-time favorite: Salted Caramel. YUM!

Worth the trip, make Denver a destination vacation and I will treat you and your family to a box of her cupcake divinity . . .
Emma Skala, owner of The Shoppe, 3103 East Colfax Avenue, Denver, CO 80206.

Ah, back to the question at hand.  Business coaching: pyramid scam or brilliant business developer?

I have an opening for a new coaching client, beginning mid-July and another in August.  If you have a sense you’d like to play with me in this amazing coaching pyramid as you brilliantly develop your business, let’s have a conversation.

Today, access my calendar to book some time just for you . . .

This week in my kundalini yoga class, my teacher Abby read something that sparked me.  I don’t know exactly what she read and here is what I realized.

To achieve anything, we can go and get it or go and do it OR we can be and get it or be and do it.  Going out uses our masculine nature.  Being uses our feminine nature.  Our culture has supported men and women alike in using and over using only the masculine way.

 
As we balance the masculine way of doing with the feminine way of being, we smooth our transitions and create the beingness foundation for moment-to-moment miracles.

For so many of us right now, many areas of our lives involve huge transition and change.  I have found in my own life and work and witnessed in the lives and work of my coaching clients that bringing more beingness to the changes tends to significantly smooth the transition.

We may not have within our control some of our circumstances, yet we always have choice about who we be in any situation.  One of my amazingly courageous clients finds that being present and gentle with herself as she’s grieving a recent loss causes her less suffering.  As I reach out to repair my relationship with my nephew, I am committed to being loving regardless of how he is or how he reacts.  I’m so happy that I’m no longer taking his anger personally.  

So, what about you – what’s your sense of how balancing more feminine beingness with your masculine doingness would impact your life and work?  I have found that I achieve what I desire far more quickly than when I don’t consciously pay attention to how I am being.  And, in the process, I am more loving, more peaceful and more joyful.  Oh yeah, and more accepting of whatever is!

Here’s to our profound personal freedom as we consciously choose how we’d like to be in any moment!  As we be whatever we desire, we achieve or get what we desire . . .  

A Course in Miracles teaches that everything we experience is love or a cry for love.

There is only Love.  

All is love.  Anything other than love is just our story, our dream, our illusion, our nightmare, whatever you’d like to call it.

Lately I’ve been observing how wed I am to my stories, which can tend to turn into nightmares.  

Off and on since the late 80s, I’ve worked with this idea of only love or a cry for love.  Yet, I didn’t realize until today that I have only looked “out there,” to the “other” to notice whether I was experiencing love or a cry for love.

What happens when I keep my focus on me?  Is the way I am relating to myself, talking to myself, experiencing myself love or a cry for love?  And when I focus only on me, how do I respond to my cries for love?  How can I be only love or offer myself love when I’m not love?

I turn to my own affirmative prayer from my new book, Thriving Work.  I offer this gift to you as well . . .

My thoughts, feelings, actions – all Love or a cry for Love . . .

Path of Love

May I breathe into being fully present,
Offering myself unconditional
attention, acceptance, appreciation,
affection and allowing.

May I gently release
judgment, fear, control and demands.

May I offer my love to everyone this way.

May I increasingly allow and receive
all the love that comes to me.

May I feel compassion
For those who are afraid to love,
Even when they are lashing out.

May all beings find and choose
This path of love.

So, what about you – how are you experiencing love and responding to cries for love?  I invite you to share in the Comments section below.

Also, if you’re in the Denver area, stay tuned for more details about a Conscious Feminine Transition group that I’m developing . . .

Since so many things have changed in my life during the past few months, I began to pay attention to what I do know as True for me.  What could I find in my life that is unchanging, even as it changes?

I first noticed my spiritual practice, the foundation of which is kundalini yoga.  The practice is different every time, but the showing up twice a week and the intention of knowing my Source with every breath, with every posture, is the same.

Next, I remembered how I know God and experience God so consistently in nature.  I used to get over to my big backyard, City Park, several times each week.  Now that I’ve moved, my big backyard expanded.  I get to hang out with these amazing rocks and experience the city from a higher vantage point from 868 acres of Red Rocks Park.

Ah, the peace that is available from higher ground! Red Rocks on a stormy May afternoon . . .

And, I’m rereading my own book, Thriving Work, which includes affirmative prayers.  When I pray, I pray many different prayers, yet each one takes me to that place of experiencing God.

When I practice kundalini yoga, when I spend time in nature, when I pray, I am aware of experiencing God.  When I am aware of experiencing God, I am at peace.  There is my solid foundation . . .

I’d love to share with you today my favorite Thriving Work prayer at the moment.

Voice of the Divine

I remember in this moment
that I am
The voice of the Divine,
The ears of the Divine,
The eyes of the Divine,
The hands of the Divine,
The feet of the Divine,
The face of the Divine.

May I speak Truth.
May I ask Truth.
May I hear Truth.
May I see Truth.
May I serve Truth.
May I walk Truth.
May I shine Truth.

May I speak Goodness.
May I ask Goodness.
May I hear Goodness.
May I see Goodness.
May I serve Goodness.
May I walk Goodness.
May I shine Goodness.

May I speak Joy.
May I ask Joy.
May I hear Joy.
May I see Joy.
May I serve Joy.
May I walk Joy.
May I shine Joy.

I am the voice of the Divine.
I am the ears of the Divine.
I am the eyes of the Divine.
I am the hands of the Divine.
I am the feet of the Divine.
I am the face of the Divine.

So, what about you – where and how do you know your solid foundation?  I invite you to share in the Comments section below.

Also, if you’re in the Denver area, stay tuned for more details about a Conscious Feminine Transition group that I’m developing . . .

Two months ago, on the first day of spring, I shared with you three “seeds” that I was planting and I asked you what you wanted to plant.

Here are mine:

I now plant and will continue to nurture and nourish the seeds of self-acceptance and compassion.

I now plant and will continue to nurture and nourish the seeds of focusing on the positive, which naturally generates more positive.

I now plant and will continue to nurture and nourish the seeds of consciously choosing.

I don’t know about you, but for me it has been a wild ride since then! 

Back up a moment, a year ago when I met my sweetheart, Gary, and published my book, Thriving Work, I was elated to bring two life-long dreams into reality.  Almost immediately, everything else in my life started to shift or dissolve.

After my initial panic, shock and disbelief, I began to look within and also ask other women what they knew about why such positive changes would bring about such upheaval.  I am just now beginning to understand that just as I became a new person to be able to receive Gary into my life and to birth the book out into the world, I have also continued to become new as we develop our relationship and as the book transforms readers.

Thus, a new me requires a new life.

Of course that makes so much sense.  I had no idea it would be so challenging.  And, I’ve come to realize that the suffering comes not as much from the new, but rather from my resistance to the new and wanting to keep things “the way they’ve always been.”

The Resistance visual meditation from the book, Thriving Work.

A few months ago, my psychic, Bonnie, told me that everything would be new in my life.  Almost as I was walking out the door, she said, “Oh, start a new website.”  She made it sound so easy.

Then about a month ago, the Universe conspired and took my computer hard drive to Heaven.  After more shock and many tears, I finally got it.

I am starting over, living everything anew, whether or not I cooperate.

So, I have decided – because remember two months ago I planted and began to nurture and nourish the seeds of consciously choosing – to cooperate and conspire with Life, my new life, rather than fight every loss.

And, because I planted and continue to nurture and nourish the seeds of focusing on the positive, which naturally generates more positive, I choose to focus beyond the loss on the rich opportunities inherent in the new.  And yes, throughout this process I certainly have been nurturing and nourishing the seeds of self-acceptance and compassion.

I’m now rereading my own book because ironically the first chapter of Thriving Work involves moving beyond resistance . . .

How beautifully God works.  And how wonderful when I notice!

When I started to ask other women what they knew about all this change and upheaval, I found out I was not alone.  Many amazing, powerful women I know are also going through huge changes.

If you are too, I’d love to share that Resistance chapter with you – as my gift.  Just go to this page.

I would also love to hear a bit of your story – please share in the Comments section below.

Also, if you’re in the Denver area, stay tuned for more details about a Conscious Feminine Transition group that I’m developing.  Hey, maybe that new website . . .

Happy Spring!

This time of year as the tulips and daffodils peek through the earth and the snow to show their brilliant red and yellow faces, we have a wonderful opportunity to thoughtfully and consciously plant seeds in our life and our work. 

Flash forward six or eight months from now to autumn harvest.  What would you most love to harvest?

Your thoughts now, your focus now will bring to fruition wonderful ideas, projects, hopes and dreams.

Or disappointment, frustration, stress and upset.

Today, in this new beginning of spring, I’m planting three new crops.

The first involves self-acceptance and compassion.  Through the winter, during many changes in my personal and business life, I have often felt like a beginner, a kindergartener.  Quite humbling.  And, I’ve sometimes been too hard on myself.  I now plant and will continue to nurture and nourish the seeds of self-acceptance and compassion.

The second involves focusing more fully on all the positive aspects of my relationship with my sweetheart, Gary.  Sometimes during the overwhelm of the transition, I tended to put my focus in the wrong place.  A breeding ground for disappointment, frustration, stress and upset, to be sure!  In this new light of spring, I now plant and will continue to nurture and nourish the seeds of focusing on the positive, which naturally generates more positive.

The third involves more fully supporting my coaching clients in thoughtfully and rigorously planting the seeds most meaningful to them.  I love that conscious choice, the foundation of coaching, makes such a difference from feeling that we’re at the mercy of external circumstances to thoughtfully choosing how we would most love our life and work.  I now plant and will continue to nurture and nourish the seeds of consciously choosing.

What about you?  Which seeds will you plant?  
 

In his book, “The Relationship Handbook,” George Pransky tells us that thoughts generate moods and emotions.

To instantly put yourself in a better mood, change your thought or drop your thought.  

Hard to imagine any thoughts that would cause negative emotions as I look at this sleeping angel!

When I think my cat’s annoying me by circling my feet as I make dinner, I feel frustrated.  When I think my cat’s doing what cat’s do, my emotions neutralize.  When I think my cat is a loyal companion, I feel warm and friendly.

Which thought do I choose to think?

Changing or dropping a thought in a moment isn’t always easy.  Sometimes it seems impossible.  And, I have found it to be an incredibly rewarding practice.

Our egos can create havoc with this one!  “But, my cat shouldn’t try to get food while I’m making dinner.  I just fed him.”  Okay, would I rather be in a bad mood or change my thought?  Of course, in this case, I can also employ all my best cat training techniques!