How To & Benefits of Meditation

Meditation is often looked at as something weird or as a practice of a particular religion. If you look at it that way, it can be both of those things for you. But learning how to meditate changed my life completely. I don’t even know how I lived without practicing it for so many years.

What in the world is meditation anyway? It is what you make it, but for me it’s an opportunity to tap into my inner self and listen to my instincts without the distractions of life that can sometimes interrupt my flow of thought.

When I first started to meditate, I could not sit quietly without thinking of everything that was on my mind. I thought about all the things on my to do list, all the things that occurred that day, and even thoughts about why I couldn’t quiet my mind.

This experience was a clear indication to me that I was not using my intuition and could not tap into my inner self. But I didn’t know how.

I started off with guided meditations, which I still use quite often because I like it just as much as a meditation that is completely silent. In a guided meditation, the leader usually has a topic matter that he or she focuses on. During the meditation, the leader will give you things certain things to think about concerning that particular topic matter, and then he or she will also allow you time to let your thoughts drift away.

Because it’s not completely silent, this helped me get my mind to a place where I could sit quietly, even for over an hour, and allowing my mind to think of absolutely nothing.

Not only does meditation, in both formats, provide a sense of peace and serenity away from the hustle and bustle of my daily thoughts, but when the meditation is complete, I always find clarity around different areas of my life.

One time I attended a two hour, silent meditation. I was a bit nervous because that was the first time I was going to be completely silent for two hours. And being as though I woke up at 3 a.m. and traveled two and a half hours to get the event, I hoped that I would fall asleep or be too tired to benefit from the meditation. There was so much on my mind at the time. It was the end of the semester, and I had a lot of essays to grade. I was also making a major change in my life, which was moving to Orlando, Florida.

Even with all of that on my mind, I knew that if I let go of my thoughts, let God do His work in me, and get out of my own way, I’d get all the answers I needed. Sure enough, I was able to go home and get my grading done in a timely manner because my mind was clear. I also moved to Orlando, Florida a few months later.

Meditating and letting go of your thoughts is one of the biggest gifts you can give yourself. If you think it’s weird and don’t open your mind to try something new, it won’t do anything for you. It will only be as beneficial as you allow it to be. But if allow it to become a practice in your life, the opportunities it will provide are endless.

Published on Tuesday September 14, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Turning Challenges Into Opportunities

Everyone, at some point in time, faces a challenge. Throughout our lives, we have learned to resist challenges because we’d prefer everything to go smoothly. But that’s just not reality.

When faced with a challenge, the first step is to accept the challenge and embrace it. It might sound crazy, because challenges are usually viewed as a source of causing some level of difficulty in our lives. Only after the challenge has been embraced can you deal with it on a higher sense of consciousness. Looking at the challenge or problem from a different perspective will reveal the multitude of choices you have in front of you. It’s all about how you react to the situation.

One of my favorite quotes by Albert Einstein is, “You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew.” This simply means looking at the challenge or problem in front of you with a new set of eyes, a set that is willing to look outside the box in order to come up with the solution that works best for you.

I may be a life coach, but I’m also human like everybody else. I like it when my life runs smoothly without problems. But I also realize that my life will only run as smoothly as my mind is willing to allow. If I can open my mind up to the opportunities that a challenge has to offer, I don’t need to get stressed out about the situation.

Recently, I made an appointment for a very important meeting to be held on a Thursday. The meeting meant a lot to me in a variety of ways. I was grateful to have it. In order to prepare for this meeting, I had asked a friend to send me 4 lbs. worth of documents from New Jersey to Florida.

She shipped it on a Monday, and we both anticipated and were told that I would receive it that Tuesday evening two days ahead of my meeting. I was charged for the price of the overnight delivery. I had no doubt in my mind that it was going to arrive Tuesday evening and planned on picking it up from the front desk of my building after my USTREAM.tv show I hold live every Tuesday night.

As I was writing this very exact article, I had so much to say about turning challenges into opportunities that I got a bit of writer’s block. My usual remedy for writers block is to scan the Internet for awhile, and then go back to what I’m writing. Often I’ll see something that will spark an idea or lead me to the next thing I want to express.

Believing that everything happens for a reason and there are no coincidences, I don’t think checking my personal email instead of scanning the Internet just happened by chance. I checked my email and realized that my friend had been sending emails all day and was in touch with UPS to rectify a challenge that occurred with the shipping of the package. Although I was charged full price for overnight shipping, the package was sent ground and was scheduled to arrive Thursday night. But my meeting was scheduled for Thursday morning.

Because of my fear about how not having the papers would negatively affect the meeting, I was about to express my frustration with the customer service representative at the company. But I thought consciously thought through the situation first, before reacting. I chose to consider the opportunities I could gain from the situation. It turned out I gained two opportunities.

First, I was able to negotiate a solution with the manager. As soon as I was transferred to her, she began to explain to me that there was nothing she could do and told me to deal with the store from where the package was shipped. She said, “I’m sorry, but I’m not the one who made the mistake.”

Speaking with her on a higher energy level, I acknowledged that she definitely was not at fault, but assured her that as a manager working out of the national office of her company, she was more than capable to help me resolve the situation. Positive communication in a challenging situation is always an opportunity to encourage myself and others who may be involved.

It did. Immediately, the confidence level in her voice perked up and her desire to help was apparent in her voice. And that’s exactly what she did. She took five minutes to think outside of the box, and resolved the situation almost immediately.

Another opportunity I gained from the situation was that I no longer had writer’s block. I believe in the theory of whatever intention you put out into the Universe is what you are going to receive back. I was looking for something to write with a good example of a recent challenge, and I was presented with one.

With any challenge my clients face, I have them write down the challenge so that they can embrace and understand it better. Then I have them write out any opportunities they can see from the situation. Depending on the circumstance, some challenges may be easier to see opportunities from than others. As a result, I am there to ask them questions to reveal the different opportunities they are willing to view from their perspective.

Published on Tuesday September 14, 2010 in Broadcast, Energy Coaching and Life Management. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Dealing With Challenging Personalities

For some people, it’s important to be right and prove themselves to everyone else. For others, being peaceful and avoiding confrontation matters even more. And for some people, they fit into either category, depending on the matter being discussed.

You must decide for yourself which category feels most appropriate for you. Even if someone else wants to challenge you in a confrontation, take the time to recognize that the confrontation can only take place if you involve yourself in it too. It’s easier to choose peace if you look at the challenging person and your situation with the person you have identified as challenging as an opportunity to learn something about yourself.

Whether the “challenging person” is someone you choose to surround yourself with or someone who just happens to be in your class at school or in your workplace, you technically have a relationship with him or her. Remember that relationships teach you more about yourself. The characteristics you love about someone else are characteristics you possess within yourself. The “funny” thing is that the thing that irks you about that “challenging person,” is a characteristic you possess, too.

A longtime childhood friend of mine finds every opportunity to be right and finding peace is not as much of a value for her than it is for me. The one thing that used to irk me the most about her was that she always tried to tell everyone what to do with their life. As a life coach, that’s completely against the grain of what I believe. I believe everyone has their own answers inside of themselves. After seriously looking at myself and my personality, I realized this bothered me so much because I also sometimes thought I knew—and expressed—what the best answer was for people, especially when it came to family and friends. I turned this realization into an opportunity to change that unappealing characteristic. If I despised that quality in others, I surely didn’t want it anymore for myself.

Through meditation and affirmations to change my way of thinking, I learned to love people for who they are no matter what decision they made. I learned that I am responsible for me, and each person on this earth is responsible for themselves. This lesson improved my life coaching skills, and also my time spent with family and friends. It was obvious my family and friends felt more comfortable around me, because of my change of attitude. The most interesting part, to me, was that I no longer judged my childhood friend. I didn’t even notice that characteristic within her anymore.

We all know or have met someone in our lives that we have found it difficult to get along with. Take it as an opportunity to learn something more about yourself, look for where that characteristic shows up in your life, and use it to make yourself who you really want to be.

Published on Sunday September 12, 2010 in Broadcast, Life Management and Self-Discovery. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

It’s All About the Stupid People

Blaming other people for what we feel is lacking in our life is the easy way out. It’s also a lie we tell ourselves. It’s much harder for someone to take responsibility for their own actions, but change cannot occur in ourselves if we always blame other people for our own choices at work in our lives.

Everyone is responsible for themselves and the choices they make in life. It’s never anyone else’s fault that a decision did not work out. Taking responsibility for a decision does not mean that if the decision does not work out that we blame ourselves. We simply just need to learn from it, and make a decision that works out better.

One semester I taught a student who constantly came to class 15 to 20 minutes late, if he showed up at all. Even when he did attend class, he never did the assignments. He always had an excuse as to why the assignment was not completed. I held one-on-one conferences with him every other week to let him know that his behavior was causing him to fail the class. Yet, he continued his behavior until I told him that his failing average was so low there was no possible way he would be able to pass the class.

Guess who’s fault it was? According to him, it was my fault. He said he didn’t know he was doing that bad and wanted me to give him the opportunity for extra tutoring and rewriting papers. These were both suggestions I had offered him earlier in the semester. But after ignoring my suggestions for months, a failing average was the end result at the end of the semester. The student wound up threatening me physically. Security ended up escorting me around campus the rest of the semester.

Unfortunately, this student did not learn anything from his classroom actions. He would not take responsibility and admit that his failing average had anything to do with himself. As a result, he is more likely to continue his behavior in another classroom or work.

Of course, as his professor, I was not happy about the situation. Not only was it a scary situation for me personally, but I also want to see all of my students be successful. I know that’s a very ambitious ideal on my part, yet I still believe in the possibility of it.

I do believe there is a chance my former student may learn from this situation later in the future. If he does, he may learn one of the biggest lessons in life.

A few semesters ago, I had a student in my class who said she couldn’t concentrate because the girl next to her in the computer lab was disruptive. Instead of paying attention, she said the girl spent much of her time trying to sneak to check her email and her Facebook. The young lady who approached me about the situation said this was the reason she only had a low C in the class. She said she normally performs much better in writing classes.

I constantly scan the computer lab for students trying to do outside activities on the computer, though there are some that get by my radar before I catch it. I told the complaining student I would pay careful attention to the young lady she was sitting next to, but that there was something she could do herself that could prevent her from being disrupted. She realized I was hinting that she could move her chair.

The thought of moving her chair frightened her because she didn’t want the other student to be mad at her. I asked her on a scale from one to ten— one being the lowest and ten being the highest—which one choice was more important to her, moving her chair and being able to concentrate or sitting next to someone disruptive who might get mad if she moved. I could tell she was nervous at the start of the next class, but she did move up to the front row. Later, I asked her if the other young lady ever said anything to her, and she did not.

It is never anyone else’s fault that you find yourself in a less than winning situation. It’s our own choices or decisions that place us in a position we don’t want to be in. We can always take responsibility and make another choice. Instead of wasting your time pointing your finger at other people, know that you are the only one who has control over you and what you choose to do in life.

Published on Friday September 10, 2010 in Broadcast, Life Management and Self-Discovery. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Turning Around Negative Self Talk

Research shows that a person experiences as many as 60,000 thoughts per day. The thing about these thoughts of ours is that most of them are the same 60,000 thoughts from day to day. The question is: what are you thinking about?

In our current society, most people’s thoughts are centered around worry, fear, and stress over a variety of topics. We worry about work. We worry about school. We worry about family and other close relationships. And the list could go on. A lot of that worry and fear stems from how we feel about ourselves.

It comes from our own perspective of life and how we’ve been trained to think. This training came from our environments growing up. They include our parents, teachers, friends, group affiliations, etc. Our thoughts result from what we’ve been taught for many years as children, and they continue into our adulthood life. That’s fine for the thoughts that support what we want in our lives. But when our usual thinking no longer works for our lives, we need to let go of the of thoughts and adopt new ones that serve us better.

Let’s use an example Don Miguel Ruiz wrote in his book, “The Four Agreements.” If someone told you when you were younger that you were stupid and you accepted what they told you, you might continue thinking that you were stupid for the rest of your life. That is until you make the choice to break that agreement and think something different about yourself.

Examples of this abound. People make agreements that they are fat, that they are ugly, that they do not deserve to be loved, or that they are not good at doing something. In my case, I always agreed that I was bad at math, until my Seton Hall statistics professor asked me if I was planning to be a math major because I performed so well in his class!

Now this is important to take note of for two reasons: (1) When it comes to dealing with other people, it’s important recognize that everyone does not think the same way you do. In this world, believe it or not, people weren’t raised to think the same way you think. So, don’t let someone else’s perspective, or even actions, personally offend you because it has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with their personal thoughts of themselves and the agreements they‘ve decided to make about themselves. (2) On a personal level, we have the power to change our thoughts. We do not have to hold onto thoughts that no longer work in our lives.

When we think and talk bad things about ourselves, we hold ourselves back from the vast opportunities in front of us. We disqualify ourselves from success before we ever get started.

How Do We Change These Thoughts?

  • Choose one negative thought that you have about yourself. For example, I was working with a client a few months ago who wanted to be a nurse but never pursed it because she thought that the education process to achieve that goal was going to be too hard and would take too long.
  • Write your negative thoughts down on a piece of paper. Take a look at it. In some coaching sessions I’ve had with clients, just looking at the negative statement makes them realize how far from the truth the negative thought really is. But for some of people who have agreed to their negative thoughts for years, a quick fix is not that easy.
  • As you are looking at this thought, reflect on it in present time. Don’t think about where it originated from and use your reason as an excuse to keep it. The past is in the past. How is this thought serving you now? If you find that it’s not serving your life positively, then it’s time to change the words you wrote down.
  • Changing the words is the next step. This is creating an affirmation for yourself. Using the example I used about the student who didn’t go to nursing school because she didn’t think she’d be capable for success, and she didn’t think she’d be able to sustain the amount of time it took her to get her degree. Through our work together she realized that her thoughts about the amount of time it would take was actually a limiting belief, which was not even accurate. She thought she’d be in school for six to eight years. She didn’t realize it could be accomplished in four years, like other bachelor degree programs.
  • Covert your negative thought into a positive affirmation. The important part of this affirmation is to use a see, hear, feel model, focusing on those particular sense to make the affirmation as real as possible. So this particular client’s affirmation turned into, “In four years, I see myself walking down the aisle at graduation, getting my nursing degree. I hear my family yelling my name to cheer me on as I walk up to the podium to receive my degree. I feel the excitement throughout my body as the degree is placed in my hands.” Decide how many times you are going to repeat your affirmation per day. The more you say it to yourself, the more you believe it. As a result, the more likely you are to take the steps to accomplish your goal and feel confident in doing so.

Follow these simple five steps to turn negative thoughts about yourself into positive ones that will help pull you forward.

Published on Wednesday September 8, 2010 in Broadcast and Self-Care. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .