How many times to you do or not do something because you’re worried about what someone else thinks? We are all guilty of this at some time and some of us are guilty of it all the time. I want to tell you a secret today. No one else is thinking about you. Not really. Not in the way you think they are. Most people are far more worried about a slight headache they have than they are about what you’re doing. While you may be a passing thought in their mind, you are not the focus of their thoughts. What is happening to them in their life is where they focus their attention. And so what if they don’t approve? Who cares? It’s not their life…it’s yours. The only oppinion that should matter is your own. You are the only one who knows what’s best for you. It’s nice that other people want to help you by giving you advice, but you have a choice to listen or not. We each have our own unique path to walk and what’s right for someone else is not necessarily right for you. If you spend all your time trying to please everyone else or do things their way, you are not being true to yourself. You are not honoring your needs. You are not acknowledging your own wisdom. You are not appreciating the unique and wonderful being that you are. And you’re not able to fully share your gifts with the world. So just for today, do what you want and forget about everyone else. Follow your instincts and intuition. Follow your heart. Do what ever it is that brings you joy and fills your life with color and meaning. Trust yourself to know what’s best for you. By doing so you can release the fear and step out in the world as your authentic self. I promise you that the people who love and care about you will appreciate you all the more for your courage. And for those who don’t, who cares what they think?

Do you ever take the time to notice your environment? I don’t mean THE environment. I mean your personal evironment. We all have multiple environments. There is our home environment, our work environment, our community environment. We even have environments for our health, relationships, spirit, and finances. Most of us never think about any of this much less take the necessary time to tend to each one making sure that they are healthy and functioning at an optimal level. It’s important to understand this concept and be vigilent of how each of our environments is serving us. Is your home cluttered causing you to spend extra time looking for items you need? How about your financial environment? Do you just allow your money to come and go and never know what happened to it or where you spent it all? Do you tend your relationships with care or take them for granted? When our environments are messy and untended so are our lives. It makes it hard to focus, plan, set goals and see things to fruition. As a result we often feel overwhelmed and further ignore the problem by numbing ourselves in front of the television, overeating, or otherwise trying to find solace in something that makes us forget for awhile why we’re really here and who we really are. If any of your environments is out of whack and not serving you it can cause an imbalance in your life that can have a domino effect on all the other areas. I’m not saying that you have to be perfect. None of us are. But being aware of your environments and how they’re affecting your life allows you to make the necessary adjustments that help your life flow smoothly. Take an honest look at your environments this week and see where you can tidy up a bit. I think you’ll find when you do that life gets easier and you free yourself up to have more time and enjoyment in your life. I think you’ll also find that clearing out the clutter opens up space for more of the good stuff to come in.

I was thinking today about inspiration. Maybe because when I sat down to write, I was feeling a little uninspired and didn’t know what I wanted to write about. Then I realized that inspiration comes naturally when you just look around or sit quietly and allow your mind to wander. You have to get out of your head and into your heart. The ego is always trying to trick us into thinking that we’re not good enough or that things around us are keeping us from connecting and doing what we want to do. But the truth is that we are always connected. We just have to stop. Stop the inumerable dramas that we allow ourselves to get sucked into all the time. Stop the constant chatter in our heads. Stop trying to distract ourselves with gadgets like television, the computer, our endless to-do lists. In today’s busy world we think we have to be doing and going all the time. It’s not true. Think about those moments when you’re not doing all those things. Maybe you’re taking a walk or relaxing in the tub letting your mind wander. Perhaps you’re just sitting on the porch or patio and enjoying the day with friends. Maybe you spend time each day in meditation or have an exercise routine that allows you to stop the chatter in your head. Or perhaps you’re spending time with nature. It’s in those moments, when we allow ourselves to stop the endless self conversations, that we are truly connected and most likely to be inspired. When we drop the caring about what everyone else thinks of us or what we imagine they want us to be or do, or all the things we think we have to do we allow ourselves to really connect. And to be connected is to be inspired. So I urge you today to take some time to stop. See what pops up. Allow yourself to be inspired and then follow that inspiration wherever it takes you.

A lot of people complained this week about all the news coverage of the royal wedding. They weren’t able to wake up and start their day with the usual news of war, economic decline, auto accidents, murders, and chaos. They felt that all the pomp and circumstance was a waste of time and cut into their daily dose of misery. Even a veteran news caster commented that the television networks shouldn’t be spending so much money on something so trivial when there are so many stories of disaster in the world that are news worthy. But I ask you, what’s wrong with starting your day with a dose of love instead? Do you realize that for a few hours, millions of people around the world were focused on one thing…..love. How great is that? Millions and millions of people were thinking about love and possibilities and romance. What if we started every day that way? What if the leading news story was always about love or unity or celebration? Do you see how this could change our world? With that many people focused on something positive instead of on fear based stories of doom and distruction we could literally change our lives. How great would it be to turn on the television or radio and hear the newscaster say “in today’s breaking news 100,000 street kids now have permanent, loving homes, 1 million people started new jobs and there have been no new forclosures on homes for the last six months, 200 species have been removed from the endangered list, and 1 billion people performed random acts of kindness. In related stories, hundreds of thousands are no longer homeless and hungry because of an amazing grass roots movement spanning the globe. And we’ll bring you updates throughout the day about how people are changing our world with those random acts of kindness.” How great would it be if the majority of news stories were about the good things people do instead of the bad things? How great would it be if news stories inspired us and highlighted our connectedness instead of our differences? Do you think this would change our collective consciousness and focus? I do. While I admit I’m not a fan of the royals and wouldn’t have cared if the wedding was televised or not, still it was refreshing to see everyone focused on and thinking about a positive event instead of something terrible. Perhaps we should take this as an invitation to spend more time thinking about the good things life has to offer. And perhaps we should ask our media to give us more inspiring stories each day. We all benefit from inspiration and hope. And what better way to start or end your day than hearing about something good and inspiring happening in the world?

I was working on a teambuilding exercise for my coaching practice the other day. It occurred to me that most people who participate in team building retreats or exercises don’t really carry anything useful away from the process. Why? Because they don’t know how to relate what they’re learning into real life. Some team building exercises are fun. Some are boring and border on the ridiculous. But the bottom line is that most teambuilding facilitators neglect to explain how building a container out of popcicle sticks to protect an egg when it is dropped from a certain height relates to our jobs or to our lives for that matter. It seems obvious that if we can’t carry back what we learn and apply it then we’re effectively wasting our time. If we don’t understand where we fit in and how to recognize and promote our strengths in the group then what’s the point? And does anyone ever bother to talk about our teams in relation to our lives outside of work? What about the global team, the community team, our family team, and countless others? We are all a part of something bigger than ourselves and finding out where we fit in is critical to our success. Each of us has unique talents, skills, and abilities that we’re meant to share. There is no one else on this earth that is exactly like you. There is no one else on earth that can offer exactly what you can offer. Take some time to think about your teams and what you have to contribute. Celebrate your uniqueness. Celebrate your talents, skills and abilities and don’t be afraid to share them with your teams and with the world.

We’re all so busy these days. We run around all day long from one thing to the next and it seems there is never enough time to get everything done. But why do we feel we have to do it all? We weren’t designed to be super people who can do it all with a smile and just keep on going like the energizer bunny. Our bodies and our minds need time to rest and reflect. Most of today’s technology was designed to make our lives easier, but somehow things seem to be more complicated. We continue to get caught up in the latest and greatest and we’re afraid if we can’t keep up people will think less of us or believe us to be lazy. There is nothing wrong with working hard or playing hard, but we just can’t continue to push and push without consequences. We have to allow ourselves time to literally do nothing or risk crashing and burning. Our bodies will force us to stop if we don’t listen by manifesting illness or accidents. Most of us think down time is catching our favorite tv program or watching a movie. Maybe going out to dinner or to a bar. But that’s not really what it’s all about. While it may be fun and relaxing, we’re still activily participating. When is the last time you gave yourself permission to just sit quietly and observe what’s going on around you or daydream, just letting your mind wander not really thinking about anything in particular? I challenge you to take time every day to simply sit and enjoy. Even if it’s only for five or ten minutes. Quiet your mind. Forget about your to do list. Just sit, relax, be. It may take practice, but things worthwhile sometimes do. So give it a try and let me know how it works out for you.

My parents grew up during the great depression in this country, then had to contend with WWII right on it’s heels. What an amazing generation they were. They learned so many lessons about survival, persistance, adaptability, and creativity. We would be wise to learn from them the power of those traits. However, they also grew up with an attitude of lack and fear and for a lot of us we were taught those attitudes as well. My Mom, for instance, never threw anything away that might come in handy in the future. She had bags full of rubberbands and twisties from bread wrappers. In fact, she even kept the bread wrappers neatly rolled up in the kitchen drawer to use instead of ziplocks. She could repair anything with those rubberbands and twisties. She refinished and reupholstered furniture and made a lot of our clothes. But she did believe that somehow everything she needed would be provided. The problem of course, is that for many of us, we learned that we couldn’t have it all. We learned to be thrifty and prepared just in case. There is nothing wrong with this, but somehow we missed the part about the universe providing us with everything we need. We grew up to belive that we have to work hard for everything we have and we have to always be prepared for a rainy day. As a result, we’ve forgotten that we have everything we need already and we’re always afraid of losing what we have. This attitude of fear and lack serves no useful purpose that I can see. The laws of the universe dictate that we draw to us what we focus on the most. Therefore, if we focus on fear and lack, guess what? Instead, doesn’t it make more sense to persistently focus on adaptability, creativity, abundance and the things we do want in our lives and to show gratitude for everything we already have?