internal compass

What Happens If You Allow Your WHYs to Guide You?

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One of my clients recently became completely overwhelmed studying for an exam for a professional certification. To support her in being present with her studying, I asked her why it’s important for her to pass this exam.

Over the phone, I heard her lighten up as she answered, “I get to help my clients in a new way and I’ll make more money with this added service.” “Why is it important to make more money?” “Because when we start a family in a couple of years, if I make more money now, I can work less then.”

“So, as you’re studying and you notice you’re starting to feel overwhelmed, can you take a deep breath, remember why you’re doing this and then get back to it?” She laughed. “Of course. I feel better already.”

For me, most years at this time of year, I have to firmly remind myself why I’m going to focus on activities I love in the summer. There aren’t many of them because summer is my least favorite season. Tomorrow when I’m enjoying dinner on a restaurant patio with a friend to celebrate her birthday, I will remember I eat lots of summer meals on the patio because I am unwilling to be miserable for 25% of each year!

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My 16-year-old niece, Hailey, and I enjoying our latte and white mocha on the patio of my favorite San Diego coffee shop, 99 Cups in Pacific Beach. YAY patios!!!

So what about you? What’s challenging you right now? What is your WHY? Does that help you move forward in a way that feels better to you? Post your experiences below . . .

What Is the Right Place to Be Looking for Love?

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“A basket full of bread sits on your head; yet you go from door to door begging for crusts. Attend to your own head. Knock on your heart’s door.”
~ Rumi

No doubt Johnny Lee’s country song “Lookin’ for Love in All the Wrong Places” was inspired by Rumi! Here’s the thing, in his song, he references lookin’ into too many faces. Rumi tells us where to find the right face – directly beneath the basket of bread on our own head.

It’s wonderful to notice love and receive love from our loved ones, from all those around us, from complete strangers . . .

And, sometimes they’re preoccupied in their own worlds. Indeed, sometimes we ourselves are preoccupied and forget to love ourselves.

What Is the Right Place to Be Looking for Love?

May a basket of bread always remind us of all the love in our hearts, overflowing with love for ourselves.

Yet in any moment, with one new breath, we can simply remember the basket of fresh bread on our head and receive the nourishment and love of our own hearts.

As always, please post your thoughts and comments below …

What Can We Rely on When Things Seem Uncertain?

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The change of administration in Washington here in the U.S. has many people feeling uncertain about what the future holds. The truth is that we never know what the future holds. And, times of transition tend to make us hyper-aware of that.

So, what can we rely on?

For some it’s faith and spiritual practice. For others it’s their own internal strengths and gifts.

While I rely on my faith and spiritual practice as well as my internal strengths and gifts, I also rely on my relationship with nature.

Here’s a 3-minute clip from a talk I gave at church this past summer about how nature sustains me.

Nature Shows Me that I Do Belong

I’d love to know what you rely on when faced with uncertainty . . .

What’s the Extraordinary Value of a Focus for the New Year?

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In addition to, or sometimes instead of, helping my clients set goals for the new year, I also help them discover their theme to focus on for the year. They often receive the theme “out of the blue.”

This is what gives the focus/theme extraordinary value. Instead of methodically and intellectually determining our goals, we intuitively and mysteriously receive our focus/theme. It gives us a very broad and deep approach to our own growth and development.

One of my clients received Listening as her focus for the new year. Another client’s focus is Being Her Own Best Friend. Mine is Seeing Anew.

What’s the Extraordinary Value of a Focus for the New Year?

I received mine on the eve of the Solstice. One of the things I’ve noticed since then is how habitually I think I know what it is I’m seeing. I love that I’m already beginning to naturally ask myself, “What is really here? What else can I see? When I look through my Eyes of Love, my Christ Eyes, what do I see?”

So what about you? Did a focus or theme come to you as you were reading this? Did you already know yours? If not, are you willing to receive yours?

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

Who Is Our Best Self When We Make Mistakes?

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This is a question I asked myself after I’d sent an email to a new client with a typo in her email address. Needless to say, she didn’t receive it. And, I didn’t realize that for several days.

Here’s the answer that came to me when I asked myself, “What does my best self look like when I make a mistake?”

She apologizes. And, quickly and fully admits she messed up. She fixes whatever she can. She asks the other person what they need for it to be cleaned up. If it fits for her, she does whatever the person requested or offers what does fit for her.

She loves herself throughout. She doesn’t criticize, demean or shame herself. She good-heartedly acknowledges her humanness.

Who Is Our Best Self When We Make Mistakes?

Ah, to be as shimmery as this begonia flower, even as I am correcting a mistake.

She lets it go. With lightness and humility, she moves on . . .

What does your best self say? I’d love your thoughts and comments below.

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

Where Is the Sweet Spot for Growing Your Business?

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Last week I attended an “Intentional Connections For Business” in Albuquerque with two of my friends who are also coaches. When we left the event, I realized that the focus had been deeper conversations, which had been wonderful.

What was missing was an easy way to stay connected and further the conversation. The event had been billed as the opposite of typical networking. To make sure we understood, the flyer included a graphic of a business card with a red circle with a slash through it to communicate “business card–free zone.”

While I understood the intent, I knew it had gone too far to the other extreme when I saw my friend, Karin, writing people’s contact info on the edge of a handout. I took a different approach and didn’t exchange info with anyone because I thought we weren’t “suppose to.” Despite it being a no card exchange place, I did manage to get the name of Catdi Printing which is a business card printing company from one of the businesses. If you are not into the idea how about Metal Business Kards where you can exchange high-quality handouts with the information about you and your business. 

As we drove home that evening, we all three realized we’d received value from the deeper connection and mindful structure of the event and felt stifled by the artificial boundary around networking and business cards. 

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I find the sweet spot in growing my business often tends to be the beautiful mix of two extremes.

We want to do business in an authentic way with people who have similar values and we want it to be easy and natural to continue the conversation. That lead to a rich conversation among the three of us about how we could each grow our businesses in a heartfelt and effective way. We spoke about many companies which inadvertently led me to mention this https://www.linkedin.com/company/gds-group Linkedin profile of the company which I’d hired to do all my marketing.

For me the sweet spot involves sharing and serving freely, generously having conversations to see if coaching with me is a great fit and directly asking for the business if it is.

What about you? What specifics create your sweet spot?
If you haven’t thought about it like this, what might help you gain clarity?

I’d love your thoughts and comments below.

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

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”)