Intentional Growth
#28 Are You Helping or Enabling?
Most of us haven't gotten a lot of guidance when it comes to being a parent of adult children, and it can sometimes be hard to know when we are helping them, and when we step over the line and begin enabling them. When we understand the difference, we can strengthen our relationships with our adult children and empower them to grow and progress.
#29 When We Don't Want to Forgive
Forgiveness can be a really tough pill to swallow, and even though we may know it will ultimately be the best thing, sometimes we just don't want to. It can feel unfair, overwhelming, and disloyal to ourselves. How do we get there?
#30 when life is just sooo hard
Sometimes, life does what life does and throws us a doozy. And whether it's in our marriage, our divorce, with our children or parents, or at work or with friends, it can just feel so hard and so unfair. How do we dig ourselves out from self-defeating thoughts? How do we empower ourselves to move forward with purpose rather than sinking into despair?
#25 Think You Don't Know? Think Again
Our knee-jerk reaction to many questions is 'I don't know.' But that's really just our primitive brain not wanting to do the work to think and process. Here are two questions to get your brain on-line and figuring out the answer so that you can get unstuck.
#26 Why Change Is Hard
Our primitive brain does some amazing things for us. What it isn't amazing at is creating change. In fact, it will actively work against us creating change in our lives, even if what we are wanting to change will make our lives so much better.
#27 How to Change
So many people struggle with change. They may want to, but they just can't seem to get themselves to do it because their primitive brain is so loud and resistant to anything that isn't familiar. What's the solution to overcoming our primitive brain and instead engaging our pre-frontal cortex?
#22 The Importance of a Good 'No'
Being raised in a people-pleasing culture, for many of us saying 'no' can feel not just awkward and uncomfortable, but wrong. Growing into a space where we can understand and embrace the 'no' as not only being healthy for our relationships, but vital for their growth and intimacy, is a part of emotional maturity.
#23 Being Seen and Heard
Many of us were raised with the idea that having wants and needs was selfish, and that we should always be last in line to get them. When we truly believe ourselves to be equals with every other person, we see that our wants and needs are not selfish, but rather understandable, and we can being to take on the responsibility for letting ourselves be seen and heard.
#24 Stuck in Indecision
When we have a decision to be made, it can be easy to get stuck with trying to decide what the 'right' decision is and wanting to avoid the 'wrong' decision. But what if there isn't a right or wrong? What if there are just different paths and experiences? And what if none of those paths is where we're supposed to be, but rather just an opportunity for us to use our agency to choose our path?
#19 Coaching and my second marriage
When my previous marriage ended after 24 years, I wasn't very interested in getting married again. After 5 years of healing and working with my own life coach, I decided to start dating, and eventually got remarried in 2022. It was a journey with a lot of growth and painful awareness, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
#20 feeling defensive?
All of us are susceptible to feeling defensive at times, it's a pretty human response to being blamed, criticized, accused or attacked. And though it comes easily, it's not such a helpful response. Learning to look for the truth in what is being said is a fabulous way to move into connection rather than contention when our defensiveness shows up.
#21 Being Confident
Sometimes we talk about confidence as something we either have or we don't, as something that we were born with or weren't. But confidence is something we choose, something we decide, and something we create when we live in alignment and learn to trust ourselves. How you choose to live determines your confidence level.
#16 How to Stop getting offended
Many of us spend a lot of time feeling offended by other people. And though other people do and say things that can be thoughtless and even hurtful, it is our choice whether to be offended or not. These are opportunities to either blow up a situation into drama, or self-confront and see ourselves more clearly.
#17 Arguing with Reality
We have a tendency to think that a lot of things in our lives are facts when they are, in reality, just thoughts. Learning to identify the actual facts empowers us see more clearly the direction we want to go and understand that pushing against them will always be a losing battle.
#18 How to Live BIG
I love the idea that Brene Brown teaches about Living BIG - living with boundaries, living with integrity, and living with generosity. When we can understand and implement these concepts into our lives, we create more connection and peace.
#13 Better Today Than Yesterday
Maybe the goal actually isn't to be better today than yesterday, but rather to keep moving in an upward trajectory. Some days are just tough, and it actually isn't an option to show up better than yesterday when everything fell in place. Offering ourselves grace during this up and down journey of life while knowing we'll figure it out is a much more peaceful place to reside.
#14 Your Next Best Self
The path of growth into the next best version of ourselves is not a comfortable one. Our primitive brain is always vying for safety and comfort and will do what it can to sabotage our growth efforts. But when we have a compelling enough 'why', our prefrontal cortex can override the panicky primitive brain and get us to the next best version of ourselves.
#15 The What and Why of Boundaries
Though the concept of boundaries has become a bit of a buzz word in our culture, there is still a lot of confusion about what boundaries really are and why they are important. They are not about controlling another person's behavior, but about creating a space where we feel safe enough to open our hearts to love .
#10 Keeping the Peace in Your Relationships
Many of the women in our generation were taught that peace in the home was the ultimate objective, and that we were the ones responsible for keeping this peace. And yet, in stifling our voices and putting our wants and needs on the table, we might have been keeping things peaceful outwardly, but we were not at peace inwardly. Learning to be honest and show up equally is a vital skill to creating the peace we ultimately want in our lives.
#11 Stop Shoulding Yourself
So many of us are in the habit of 'shoulding' on oursleves. This is the place where we often berate ourselves for things we 'should' or 'shouldn't' be doing. And though it seems like an innocuous phrase, when we should ourselves, we put ourselves in a victim mentality, being stuck in the problem, rather than a hero mentality, where we become solution focused.
#12 How To Get Others To Change
If the people in our lives would just do what we suggest, life would be so much easier! And yet, it doesn't work that way. For some reason we are all wired to want to live our own lives and make our own choices. When we support others with love and kindness in their life path, they feel more acceptance and we feel more peace. We both have a safer space to look at our flaws and weaknesses and choose growth.
#7 I Am Not Your Friend
When someone makes the decision to work with a life coach, they are not paying for a friend. They are choosing to work with someone who will be honest with them about the dysfunctional and destructive thinking and behavior patterns they see. So though I'm kind and loving, my job is not to be your friend.
#8 Why Boundaries Are Important
When boundaries first entered my life I'll admit I was scared and intimidated. I've since learned that without healthy boundaries, there are no healthy relationships. A place without boundaries is a place where resentment and anger push out love and compassion.
#9 Everything is Figureoutable
It can be easy to believe our brain when it says that things are too hard, that we can't figure it out, that we're just not smart enough. And yet, our brains were created to solve problems, and everything we encounter has a solution. Believing in our ability to figure things out is the first step to creating the life we want.
#4 Avoiding Difficult People
Avoiding difficult people can feel like a quick fix to a challenging situation, but maybe there's another way to approach this situation that will be more productive in the short-term and also for our own growth long-term.
#5 Finding Yourself
It can be easy to be distracted and enticed by who and what other people are and to compare yourself to them. But learning to see, accept, and embrace who God created you to be is your path for finding true fulfilment and an engaging life.
#6 Better Decision Making
Some decisions in our life just feel so big and difficult to make. Rather than trying to look forward to the end result of the decision, look instead at your reasons for making the decision and it becomes much easier to understand which direction will ultimately work the best for you.
#1 How Gratitude Heals
Not surprisingly, gratitude is not something that comes naturally to us as humans, it's something that we need to learn and cultivate. And when we do learn it, studies have found that it has a positive influence on our mental health. What can you do to practice more gratitude?
#2 Growing Kinda Hurts
It's inevitable that people in your life are going to do things that are hurtful to you or that you don't agree with. Learning to offer grace to others for things they do that you don't understand is a tool that will bring you a lot of peace in your life.
#3 Maybe Nothing Has Gone Wrong
When we hit mid-life and look at where we are, it's easy to see that we are not where we thought we would be. And from this place it can be an easy jump to thinking that something has gone wrong or that we have done it wrong. But what if nothing has gone wrong? What if everything is just how it was meant to be?