Tag Archives: journal

Four Questions About Love

Valentine’s Day can bring up a lot of emotions, especially for women. Did your significant other show you the affection you hoped for? Did the day go the way you wished? Or, maybe this year you do not have a significant other to celebrate a relationship with.

Whatever the underlying cause, your sense of love and being loved can be triggered around this holiday regardless of how you intellectually claim otherwise.

While the emotions are still in sight and have not become a distant memory tucked neatly away, take 30 minutes today to go somewhere private—a walk in the woods or the bathtub will work. Ask yourself these 4 questions.

  1. Do I feel loved?
  2. What would have made me feel more loved, if anything, this past Valentine’s Day?
  3. How much of my self-worth comes from the love I receive from other people or one other person?
  4. What situations make me feel the most loved?

You might want to journal your answers and really own how you feel. Once you take stock of your current situation, I challenge you to spend the next 30 days loving yourself.

What would that look like?

How could you take better care of you, be kinder to yourself, love yourself—right now, as you are?

Are there things in your answers to the four questions above that you might be able to do for yourself, rather than wait for someone else to do?

Years ago a mentor of mine told me to go home and tell myself “I love you,” while looking myself in the mirror over and over again—until I felt it. Really felt it. I thought it a silly exercise, until I tried to do it. As I repeated the phrase over and over, I began to cry because I realized how little I really did love myself—without someone else validating I was worthy of love.

Make a commitment to find out what will help you feel worthy of love and to do those things for yourself.

  • Are there things you have always wanted to do, but have held back from doing in order to support others that you could now do—a class, a trip, a commitment to a new routine?
  • Do you love flowers, but never buy them for yourself?
  • Do you enjoy alone time but never carve time out of your other commitments?
  • Are there friends you want to spend time who you could set a monthly or weekly date with?

Find the keys that will tell yourself—through action—that you are loved and lovable. By growing your self-love you will not only be happier, you will also be helping those around you love you more because you will be radiating that you are worthy of love and attracting love because your heart will be full of love to give.

Amy

Wise Women Often Speak in Whispers

Two questions I get asked most often are, “How do I get in touch with my inner guidance?” and “How do I tell the difference between my inner guide and my anxieties and doubts?”

 These are important questions. Each of us has our own compass to know what is true for us. Unfortunately most people rarely look inside for answers to their most pressing questions. There are some universal truths to help you hear more clearly your wise inner soul and discern her from the other inner voices.

 Of course, the first and foremost step to cultivating your inner wisdom is beginning to listen.

Most of us are so busy “doing life” that we rarely slow down long enough to hear the small, quiet whisper of our inner guide. I have learned to notice that when I finally have time with nothing planned if I am quick to call a friend, or make a date, I am probably avoiding hearing what she has to say.

An easy way to make sure you’ve opened the door and invited your wise woman to speak is to cultivate quiet time in your life–time when you are not trying to figure something out, get anything done, or interact with someone else–just time for you. This can take many forms, and some of my favorite ways are to:

  • Journal
  • Meditate
  • Exercise
  • Unplug my phone and computer for an afternoon
  • Walk in the woods
  • Take a long bath
  • Practice yoga

What you do to cultivate your inner guide is not as important as that you do it, and do it regularly enough that a deep conversation can emerge.

The reason most of us feel so disconnected to our inner wise woman is because she speaks softly, almost in whispers. She does not push or pull at us like doubt and anxiety; nor does she turn up the volume to get our attention. She waits patiently until we turn our attention inward.

 In today’s tech culture with our fast paced lives where we multitask everything, it takes an active decision to cultivate wisdom. Usually we turn outside for advice–friends, co-workers, books, and authority figures. We ask for more information.

 Yet, wisdom is an inner knowing rather than factual intelligence. I have been meditating for 25 years and although I don’t hear loud voices talking to me; my regular practice of going inside keeps me calm under pressure and helps me feel the difference between my myriad of negative stories and my true inner guide.

 When your inner wise woman gives you advice it usually causes a release in the tension in your shoulders, your jaw, or might even bring out a sigh of relief. She does not shame or make you feel guilty. She helps you move towards more joy. Her wisdom can open doors that you did not even know were there; once you begin to listen.

 In some traditions, when you meditate you incline your head slightly towards your heart as if preparing to listen. I like that visual. My mind is a great tool and when it is in service to my heart my life works well, people appear in time to help just when I need them, and circumstances arise that I could not force into existence–all as if by magic.

 Make time each day to quiet your mind and soon your heart will be guiding you regularly.

 

Are you stressed and unhappy?

Why are so many women under stress and unhappy?  And what can we do about it?

The American Psychological Association reports that 49% of women say their stress has increased in the past 5 years.  Has yours?  I know you have heard the detrimental effect of stress on your health, but you may have pushed on feeling you need to in order to achieve a certain goal.  If you are like most people, you attribute your future happiness to the achievement of that goal; and so you ignore your stress levels for this future reward.

However, your success and happiness are more directly tied to your enjoyment of your current life than the achievement of some future goal.  In fact, your ability to succeed is dependent on your ability to think clearly, solve problems, be creative and visualize yourself happy–all of which are hindered, if not completely halted, by stress.

Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor at the University of California, has shown that fully 40% of your happiness is available for you to control.  You and I often consider our outer circumstances as holding the keys to our happiness.  Because of this you probably focus much of your efforts on trying to change people and circumstances to increase your happiness. Sonja’s brain studies show that by influencing the 40% that is an internal job, we can greatly change our happiness quotient!  This is great news for me because it’s frustrating to have important aspects of my life out of my own control. How about you?

Have you noticed you cannot be happy and stressed at the same time?  They do not go hand in hand.  So the effort you place on increasing your happiness will also reduce your stress levels–a double win!

There are actually happiness exercises you can do to increase your happiness, today!  Nancy Clark writes about these in her article in Forbes.  Two of my favorites are paying attention to things you do well and congratulating yourself on your successes rather than rushing past them; and exercising gratitude.

I often coach women to make a list of their accomplishments.  Try it.  You can activate your confidence and improve your ongoing success by noticing and celebrating everything you do well and have achieved.  It is a list you should add to regularly; reading it daily if necessary during times of great uncertainty.  Another list that helps immensely is listing what you are grateful for about yourself.  See my challenge on this here.

The other tool I use is a gratitude log.  I learned this exercise from Christie Marie Sheldon and then later read about it in Wallace Wattles work, The Science of Getting Rich.  Christie calls it “Great Fuel.”  Don’t you love that?

Wallace says the key to attracting what you want can be summed up in one word, gratitude. That is a powerful statement and I think he is right.  Each night I write in my gratitude journal, kept by my bedside, all the things I am grateful for that day.  Some days things haven’t gone well and it is hard to find something to be grateful for so I resort to being grateful for my children and my health and my home and find I still have a lot to be grateful for.  Somedays the list is long and on others I am so profoundly moved by one thing I write about it in detail. Regardless of how my gratitude list looks, it always puts me in an improved state of mind before I go to sleep.

These are both powerful tools you can add to your life today and increase your happiness and decrease your stress, now!