Simply Authentic...Your Soul Voice is Calling. From Dr. Phil - You Can't Play the Game of Life with Sweaty Palms

From Dr. Phil – You Can’t play the Game of Life with Sweaty Palms.

I liked this article from Dr. Phil in the October 2013 issue of O Magazine enough to quote a good chunk of it here.

There’s a four letter F word that’s not offensive to your sensibilities. It won’t send your moral compass spinning like a top. But this F word is far more insidious because, unbeknownst to you, it could be the motivation behind a shockingly high percentage of the life choices you make. The F word I’m walking about is fear.

A psychology professor of mine used to say that 80 percent of decisions are based on fear rather than desire… If he was even close, think about what that could mean for your life. What if you married not Mr. Right but Mr. Right Now because you heard your biological clock ticking… Or what if you spend the next decade in some boring, dead-end job because you’re afraid nobody else will hire you to do something you love?...

It’s possible you’ve been selling out for so long, you don’t even notice it anymore. I get so many letters from readers who feel stuck or are living without the sizzle they long for. Too often we settle for what we don’t want instead of reaching for what we do. Why? It’s an epidemic that I call fear paralysis.

You can’t play the game of life with sweaty palms, so it’s time to do a brutally honest “decision audit” to find out what’s driving your choices. List the top seven decisions you’ve made in your life, and think back to how you made them. Ask yourself truthfully if you were driven by an aspiration or if fear ran the show. Were you moving toward something you wanted or away from an alternative that scared you? … Living – really living – is about taking chances, so what a shame if you never conquered your fears.

By the way, I am not advocating a reckless risk-to-reward ratio… What I am saying, however, is that if you are punking out on your dreams, you need to start believing in yourself enough to go for it instead of settling into your comfort zone…

Start by not blowing the stakes of your decision out of proportion. Your self-worth is not a matter of wins versus losses. It’s an inherent, God-given quality, so don’t catastrophize the consequences of your decisions.

Next, I want you to play the “what if” game, but you need to play it all the way to the end. If you’re going to ask the question, then you’ve got to answer it with a realistic worst-case scenario. What if you quit your job and the next gig didn’t work out? Is it an outcome you’d be able to handle? Could you recover?...

You’d likely start over again and be much wiser. If you’d be gambling your rent money or your children’s lunch money, then maybe the risk isn’t worth it. But if that’s not the case, I’m betting that the downside isn’t as bad as you think – and the upside could be life-changing. You’ll never get ahead by playing it safe.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Which is why I didn’t. J Thanks, Dr. Phil.

Authentically Yours,

Laura

Simply Authentic...Your Soul Voice is Calling. If I Can't, God Can

If I Can’t, God Can

Is something bothering you? So much so you can’t stop thinking about it? Get yourself a can. Or a jar. Set the can aside for one specific purpose, to put your worries in, knowing if you can’t deal with it, someone else can. The someone else could be your higher power (I call mine a God Can) or a circle of people or angelic entities you trust.

 

Write your worries down on a piece of paper. Fold the piece of paper and put it in the can. Make it symbolic, a ritual, knowing you no longer have to worry about that issue. Your IVIN (Inner Voice/Intuitive Nature) will help you sort it out, and you can forget it about it now. Whenever the worry resurfaces, remind yourself, “That is in the can!”

One of the first techniques I learned was the God Box. You simply write down your worries and pop them into some kind of a container…Sounds simplistic, but honestly, it works… During the period of offering, solutions often spontaneously arise. When the mind is no longer grasping for an answer, space opens. The Box gives room for a Divine plan, even in impossible messes. –Tosha Silver, from the book OUTRAGEOUS OPENNESS

Authentically Yours,  

Laura

Simply Authentic...Your Soul Voice is Calling. It's All ABout Me: Part 2

It’s All About Me: Part 2

There’s one best way to give to others, and that is to give to yourself first. Good financial advisors say to pay yourself first. The same is true of your emotional bank account. None of us can share what we don’t have to give.

Take a solo retreat to a beautiful area (the coast, mountains, prairie, river) for a half day, an entire weekend if you can. Bring only inspirational reading material, your journal and a pen. The iPad is okay as long as you use it only to write and read inspirational material. Turn off the phone. Do not check e-mails. TV, do I even need to mention…NO! Don’t even listen to music, other than the music of the birds singing, the natural hum of insects and nature, the brush of the wind, the sound of the moon coming out over the water. Soundless perfection.

Pay attention to everything you see, hear, smell, touch. Write about it. Everything will have meaning in it. Sleep well and deep. You will come back to your daily life completely rejuvenated.

Authentically Yours, Laura

Simply Authentic...Your Soul Voice is Calling. It's All About Me

It’s All About Me: Part 1

Do whatever comes your way to do as well as you can. Think as little as possible about yourself and as much as possible about other people and about things that are interesting. Put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give. –Theodore Roosevelt

Of course I can’t speak for you – but I am an interesting person. Frankly, my whole life is extremely fascinating. And I am a scintillating conversationalist…which is perhaps why I spend so much time talking outloud to myself.

Nonetheless, I happen to appreciate these wise words from Mr. Roosevelt.

Truthfully, I suspect most of us spend way too much time worrying about what others think of us, when they are too busy worrying about themselves and their own fascinatingly scintillating (read sorry ass) lives to really think about us at all.

I also happen to believe most people are inherently good. And I am cognizant of how blessed I am with people I love and who love me.

And if you can take one more thing I happen to believe, it is that the better you take care of yourself, the more you have to give to others. Ya just gotta water your own well first.

In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. –Anne Frank

Your vision will become clear only
when you can look into your own heart.
Who looks outside, dreams;
Who looks inside, awakens.
-Carl Jung

Authentically Yours, Laura

Simply Authentic...Your Soul Voice is Calling. The Myth of Multi-Tasking

The Myth of Multi-Tasking

I interviewed Meggin McIntosh (www.meggin.com) a while back for a Wishweaving Word newsletter. I remember her saying that in this day of perpetual busyness, none of us can multi-task (unless you’re doing something really mindless like folding the laundry while watching television) – the best any of us can hope for is rapid serial-tasking.

 

I thought of that this morning while I was on my way to the office and saw a woman on roller skates pushing a stroller with a child in it, while holding her dog’s leash – the dog was running alongside the stroller. Now that is multi-tasking! And I wonder how attended to the woman, or the child, or the dog, felt in that moment.

Then came to mind something my boyfriend said recently while quoting an acquaintance (I am loosely paraphrasing here)… “Yep. I woke up this morning. I organized the tool shed. Then I gave both dogs a bath.  Then I finished the garage painting project I started yesterday. Then I built a retaining wall by the front garden plot. Then I sanded all the woodwork in the studio and stained it… And that was all in the five minutes before I got out of bed.”

Which brought to mind something Sara Wiseman (www.sarawiseman.com) wrote in WRITING THE DIVINE. She was talking (and I am even more loosely paraphrasing here) about how so many mothers/parents are so busy running their children from soccer practice to dance lessons to softball games to band rehearsal that most of the time what the children see of their Mom is the back of her head from the back seat of the car.

 

 

This, people, is insane.

If we never take a moment (better yet, an hour, or a day, or at the very least 15 minutes) to breathe, have down time, and listen…how can we hear our innermost, authentic voice? I daresay we can’t.

You will find, as you look back upon your life, that the moments when you really lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love. –Nikhil Saluja

The Voice
There is a voice inside of you
That whispers all day long,
“I feel this is right for me,
I know that this is wrong.”
No teacher, preacher, parent, friend
Or wise man can decide
What’s right for you—just listen to
The voice that speaks inside.
-Shel Silverstein

Authentically Yours, Laura

Simply Authentic...your soul voice is calling. The Authenticity of Language (Cussing)

The Authenticity of Language (Cussing) 

I’ve never been a big swearer. Seriously. There have been periods in my life wherein I cussed more than others. I’m not sure why, really. Maybe at times when I was feeling stressed or when I felt more free or when I just didn’t give a f***.  Bah ha.

Just recently – I would say in the last year or so – I’ve started saying sh**-fu** (those two cuss words strung together) in certain rare circumstances wherein I could just as easily have said wow-really-seriously-can-you-believe-that? But that’s a lot more syllables.

Mostly, when I hear people swear - even in movies or music – when every other word seems to be the F bomb or something else – I basically tune out. It doesn’t feel good to my heart, and as a result I really don’t hear the other messages that might want to be conveyed.

But I gotta tell ya… Recently, while I was on my stomach in bed, relaying a frustrating phone conversation from my work day to my boyfriend, I whacked my forehead downwards three times while saying Jesus f****** Christ. 

George asked if that was the sound of my beating my head against the wall and I said yes and immediately apologized while looking up (like Jesus was hanging out there on the ceiling) because I had just seriously taken the name of the Lord in vain. And while it was meant to be funny (and kind of was, while repeatedly smashing my face against the pillow on the mattress) I didn’t like the way it felt.

So, I immediately suggested that we come up with some other way of expressing this particular form of frustration, one that would have nothing to do with Jesus Christ combined with the F word, but would sound similar enough to have the same feeling.

George said cheese and rice. (We both really like Mexican food.) I said but there has to be something in the middle, like duck. But I really don’t care for duck. (I mean the meat, not the bird. I am quite fond of our waddling, swimming, flying feathered friends.) And he said something that sounded like “Cheese is stuck in rice.”

That wasn’t exactly what he said. But it totally works. And it makes me giggle. Maybe not anyone else, but we get a good laugh out of it.

When in doubt, in a frustrating scenario, remember…cheese is stuck in rice. 

Authentically Yours,

 

Laura

Simply Authentic...your soul voice is calling. The Authenticity of Being of Service

The Authenticity of Being of Service

My boyfriend, George, said something recently, during a coffee break at my office, which bears repeating. I needed to get back to work and he had a client scheduled at the top of the hour.

Neither of us wanted to end our time together and head back to the desk (me) and massage table (him). But the way he worded it was, "Now we go back to helping people."

He has reminded me before (at times when I was majorly stressed out, or unhappy in my work that particular day, or in that particular situation, or with that particular client) with such earnestness in his face and belief in me in his heart, "Just think about all the people you are helping, all those people who need your help."

This goes into my authenticity model because it is such a simple shift in thinking to change your attitude.

When I was first introduced, years ago, to Neale Donald Walsh's CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD trilogy, I listened to the audio books in my car over and over. I remember hearing, over and over, whatever it is you desire, give to another.

Virtually any activity any of us take part in can be looked at as a way of being of service to another. If you run out of milk in the middle of making banana bread and rush out to get some, you are supporting the dairy farmer and all the people and businesses which got the milk from the Holstein into your shopping cart. And you can strike up a friendly conversation with the cashier.

It's easy to remember that you're being of service while planning a dinner party for six of your favorite people; not necessarily so easy when you're going in for a root canal. Yet this slight shift in thinking can work miracles in the way we feel about the daily tasks ahead of us, particularly if we approach the opportunity to be of service with joy. I love this! I certainly don't manage it with every single task every single day, but I love the reminder!

Authentically Yours,

Laura