When we say “I’ll try,” what we are really feeling is, “I don’t think I want to.”

To live an authentic life we must make commitments for ourselves and stick with them. Fear leads us down the “I’ll try” path. It’s our way out, our excuse before we fail. We set ourselves up to fail by using the word try.

My husband recently said to me, “I am going to try and get up early to get an extra early start to work Monday morning.” (He is NOT a morning person and getting up early is NOT his thing). I responded, “If you really want to get up early, then don’t try, just do it!” “Make that commitment to yourself.”

When we come home at the end of the day, we don’t walk in the house and try and sit on the couch. We just sit, we are clear, we are tired and need some relief on our legs, time to sit. When we are thirsty, we don’t try and drink a glass of water, we drink the water!

Think of all of the things in our lives we ‘try’ and do…

Lose weight, commit to an exercise plan, get a new hobby or job, meditate, make new friends, get involved with a charity, watch less television, read a new book a month etc.

Trying doesn’t work! We must clearly decide and commit to either doing something or not. When we do, a tidal wave of energy lines up with our intention and it’s difficult for our desire not to happen.

When we are faced with making a decision or commitment, pause, check in with the true heart feeling about it. If it feels right in the moment then commit 100%. If more time is needed then tell the person, “I’ll get back with you with a response.” Use that time to really get clear on what the heart is saying. What’s our truth, a clear yes or a clear no? Do not respond with “I’ll try” or “maybe.”

We must push ourselves to be our best by committing to things in life that make us all that we can be. Holding a clear intention of commitment to anything from attending a party to losing 30 pounds is powerful. Isn’t it time to push through fears of “being scared,”  “not ready yet” or “it’s too hard”? No more excuses, don’t try, just do, your life is waiting.

Upon rising, THE BEST thing we can put into our body is warm water with lemon (always fresh, not bottled lemon juice). This honors our body in more ways than we can imagine.

After our last meal of the day is taken in and digested, our bodies delight in the relaxation of our innards. What actually happens while sleeping is our bodies fall into a mini fast where our digestive tract can relax and our bodies shift into detoxification mode. During this time of “digestive rest,” our body intuitively directs our energy to “clean house” of every organ, muscle and even our blood.

This is the reason the first thing that goes into our bodies is crucial. Warm (not hot) water with lemon moves the detoxified waste out of our systems with ease. The lemon grabs the waste and uses the water to flush our system and eliminate.

Another benefit of lemon water is it is alkalizing for our bodies. When we have an alkaline body versus acidic, it creates an environment in the body which illness cannot exist. Acidic tissue is a breeding ground for illness.

To aide with the alkalinity of the body throughout the day, don’t stop with the morning lemon water cocktail; enjoy this beneficial drink throughout the day.

Many people say they don’t want to run to the bathroom all day drinking so much water. If this is happening, it’s a sign that the body is not absorbing water, it is dehydrated and is more than likely acidic. Drinking lemon water versus straight water, aids with the absorption of the water into your system.

Show your body how much you love it and try this for 30 days, we have nothing to lose but dehydration issues, acidic tissue and detoxified waste.

Following the latest post on “Living From the Heart” is an exquisite example of this.

This video is on  Jill Bolte Taylor and her experience of having a stroke which shut down the left hemisphere of  her brain. This forced her to live completely from the right hemisphere of the brain and she lives to tell about her miraculous experiences.

Living from the “right brain” exclusively, merges us into the oneness, there is no separation, it’s living completely from a heart place.

Click HERE to watch video

How often do we hear, “How does that make you feel?” versus “What do you think about…?”

When we begin asking ourselves “How does this make me feel” throughout the day we begin to shift our energy into the right brain, the intuitive, feeling part of our brain. This is where we connect into our essence, our soul, God. This question pulls our energy from the head and places it in our heart.

Many of us sit with unanswered questions about a relationship, a job, moving etc. we try so hard to ‘figure it out’ (which puts our energy in the head) when all we need to do is ‘sit with it’ in the heart and feel our truth. When we choose to feel something we get the answer from our divine essence, our soul, it’s the highest truth. We cannot get it wrong.

Start asking yourself, “How does this make me feel?” then come up with your feeling. Just be with it. There is nothing to ‘do’ with it. When we feel like we would like to take action or tell someone etc. we have shifted back into our left brain, our logical side, we have given power to the ego to take over. The ego reacts from fear, this will get us nowhere. Staying in the heart is the most empowering choice we can make for ourselves.

I noticed while stopping at a red light yesterday, I (unconsciously) picked up my cell phone. I was going to read a text and email. I instead sat there, radio off, put the phone down and asked myself ‘how do I feel?’ I was surprised to find that I felt uncomfortable with sitting there doing nothing! So I sat with my ‘uncomfortable’ feeling. This feeling dissipated after a minute and then I felt neutral. I was so excited that I pushed through! It was incredibly empowering. Every other red light I came to I just sat, present moment and was ‘with’ myself, completely. It felt amazing!

We can’t minimize the little moments like the red lights. We must find present moment and stay in our feeling place with the big moments and small. In our society we have a million things that can distract us and pull our attention away from the present moment, cell phones, texting, emails and computers are some of the biggest.

By continuing to ask ourselves this question, neurological pathways will re-route in the brain. Before you know it you will not have to think to ask yourself this question, it will become automatic.

When we are with our feelings, good or bad, we will stop reacting to what people say or do. The moment we react, we have given our power away, no one can take our power, it is only given. Sit and feel to find your truth, and hold your power. Ask yourself the question, “How does this make me feel,” and change your life forever.

I remember growing up saying a blessing before we ate our meals. I never quite understood why we did this until a few years ago when I learned the relationship between food and energy.

This is a beautiful excerpt from the book Nourishing Traditions that reminds us the importance of being present in performing every daily task, even preparing our meals.

“If woman could see the sparks of light going forth from her fingertips when she is cooking and the substance of light that goes into the food she handles, she would be amazed to see how much of herself she charges into the meals that she prepares for her family and friends.

It is one of the most important and least understood activities of life-that the radiation and feeling that go into the preparation of food affect everyone who partakes of it, and this activity should be unhurried, peaceful and happy.  It would be better that an individual did not eat at all than to eat food that has been prepared under a feeling of anger, resentment, depression or an outward pressure, because the substance of the lifestream performing the service flows into that food and is eaten and actually becomes part of the energy of the receiver.  That is why the advanced spiritual teachers of the East never eat food prepared by anyone other than their own chelas.  Conversely, if the one preparing the food is the only one in the household who is spiritually advanced and an active charge of happiness, purity and peace pours forth into the food from him, this pours forth into the other members and blesses them.  I might say that there are more ways than one of allowing the Spirit of God to enter the flesh of man.”  (Maha Chohan Electrons)

Someone says or does something not so nice to you and you feel so angry that you have to call someone else to tell them about it, we call it venting. We tell the whole story, every detail, sometimes yelling, screaming or maybe even have a shocked tone to our voice and say something like, “Can you believe “so and so” did that to me???”  “The nerve of them!”

We get the validation from our friend or family member that we were right and “the culprit” is totally wrong. At the end of the conversation, when we are done venting, we say to our friend, “Thanks for Listening.”

When we take into consideration the Law of Attraction which states, “like attracts like”, or “what you think (or talk) about comes about,” do we really want to be telling our story all over again, creating more of what we don’t want? The irony is that we thank our friends for helping us to create more of the same exact thing that made us upset to begin with!

The world we live is in a mirror for all of our thoughts and beliefs. When someone gossips about you, it’s because you gossip too (even if it’s only once in awhile). When someone treats you with disrespect they are simply mirroring the disrespect that you feel toward yourself, but are unwilling to look at. When a parent allows their child to yell at them, and does not discipline them, on some level the parent believes they deserve it.

A client of mine was pregnant with her 2nd child and continuously thought that something bad was going to happen to her baby. She weekly attracted in women that told her horrifying stories about their complications with pregnancy and/or the birthing experience. When she and her husband excitedly shared the news of being pregnant with baby #2 with her mother in law, the response was that she was not going to say anything to anyone in case she had a miscarriage! (By the way,her mother in law did not say this when hearing the news of baby #1).

She lived with stories like this for months. She came for a session I asked her why she was attracting in all of these people and their terrible stories. Because like thoughts/beliefs attract like thought/beliefs and experiences, we decided to examine her beliefs around this baby. We found her belief to be that she did not deserve to have another healthy child, since she had already had one. We worked through that belief and shifted her worthiness around having another healthy child. THAT DAY was the last day she heard any horrifying stories about child birth, problems with pregnancy and the loss of a child. Her thoughts and beliefs had changed and her new experiences reflected that.

The only part of us that enjoys (and needs) to tell “our story” and how we were hurt is our ego/mind. It is looking for validation that it is right and the other person is in the wrong.

The empowering thing to do when something negative happens in life, is to become aware of our part in attracting it. We need to look in the mirror and take responsibility for our thoughts and beliefs. These are the very things that create our negative and positive life events. We have no one to blame for a negative event but ourselves and our sloppy thinking/beliefs. Look at each negative event as a gift. It’s the gift of showing us which limiting thoughts/beliefs to clean up to change our life for the better.

Around 3 weeks ago, my son began developing almost daily headaches, with some neck pain. They would come on slowly and eventually they would get so bad, he would wind up in bed, blinds closed with nausea.  Last Monday I decided to take him to the pediatrician for an exam. After a thorough exam showing us nothing, we were sent to an orthopedic/spinal specialist. There, after 3 x-rays was found 2 “unusual spots” on my son’s neck. The doctor wanted to probe further so we then were sent for an MRI.

Whether you have children or not, getting a diagnosis like this is a scary one. It was a true test for my husband and me to stay present moment. I also had to make the decision of who to tell about this diagnosis. It could turn out to be nothing or it could turn out to be something, we would not know until the results were in from the MRI. The MOST important thing for me was to stay positive, not in denial but to take each moment and think not only positively but to send my son and specifically his neck loving thoughts and healing words. For this reason I decided to only tell a select few people that would be able to keep my son in loving, healing hands and send him tremendous healing light.

What many of us don’t realize is the power of our words. Everything in our world is energy, the grass, the table you eat breakfast on, the human body, each thought we have and each word we speak. Energy vibrates at different speeds depending on what it is. Positive thoughts vibrate higher (or faster) and negative thoughts or words carry a much lower (slower) vibration. This is why when we feel sad, our bodies feel heavier, slower vibrations feel heavy.

When people hear of someone that is sick, or worse in the hospital, they typically say, “I am so worried!” Worry is fear and when you have a thought that is from fear about someone it does not help them in the least bit, in fact it could add to their illness. There have been countless studies done on the power of prayer and the positive effect it has. Behind a prayer or positive thinking is a thought that carries a higher/healing vibration. When you are thinking of a sick person while in this higher vibrational state you are actually sending them healing energy.

Unfortunately I have had 2 friends that have lost their children to cancer. For one of them, the road was a long one, her son was sick for many years. There were times during  his illness when we would rally a group of  people to send her son light or healing thoughts and she would notice on her end healing shifts that her son would make during the time of our thoughts and prayers. One time I recall he had a terrible infection and it was creating a rash all over his chest, the doctors had tried numerous medications and nothing was working. We had decided to rally a large group to send him light and healing at precisely 3pm. My friend called me shortly thereafter saying that they could see the rash/infection shrinking before their eyes. The doctors had no medical reason for it and considered it a miracle.

Getting back to my son, there was a 24 hour period between the x-rays and the MRI. In that 24 hour period my son was sent tremendous loving /healing thoughts by a choice group of people.  His headaches stopped that day. The MRI we done and results were read to us the next day. There was nothing on the scans. They had no explanation of the previous spots on his neck from the x-rays and wanted to send him to a neurologist for further evaluation and migraine medication.

My husband and I left the office with huge smiles on our faces and thanked God for this gift we had received.  We realized what had happened and knew there would be no neurologist in our son’s future. We felt extremely grateful for the gifts that we had received from our friends and their powerful thoughts, visualizations and words. My son has not had a headache since and when I asked him yesterday how he was doing and if he had a headache his comment was, “No mom, please stop asking me…it’s done.” And I knew it was.

The power of words.

Recently after having some interactions with a family member I felt a lot of anger and frustration bubble up inside of me.

As my day went on, I realized an hour had gone by since our interaction and I was still holding the negative emotions from our interaction.

When I tuned into my body, I felt shortness of breath, a knot in my stomach and a heaviness on my chest.

Thinking back to our interaction I realized (1) there was no solution to the problem (I could not fix her or the problem) and (2) I am allowing someone outside of myself to ruin my mood, my health and as time went on, my day.

By holding all of this negative energy, it hurts no one but me!

If I could see inside my body, I would guess my blood pressure had risen dramatically, the aging process had been accelerated due to all the stress chemicals being released and by holding this negative emotion to me to it disconnecting me from my connection to God/the universe. It’s like pinching off a hose with water running through it. I am doing this to myself!

So when in a mood or emotional place like this, with no resolution what can we do?

A technique that I find works remarkably well for instances like this is called The Sedona Method.

With the Sedona Method we ask ourselves a series of questions regarding our mood and/or emotional state. The question and response dialogue used with Sedona creates an outlet for stored negative emotion(s) to exit.

Here are the steps of this process: (I will use my experience as an example)

1. Ask yourself: “What is my NOW feeling?   (ANGER)
2. “Could I welcome or allow it?”  (YES)
3. “Could I let it go?”   (YES)
4. “Would I let it go?” (YES)
5. “When?”  (Now)

While asking these questions to yourself really tune into your body, many times you will actually feel the energy/emotions release out of your body. Really sit with each response to the question. Be honest with yourself.

If you should get a “No” answer to any of these questions, ask yourself this question: “Would you rather feel that feeling or be free?” Allow yourself to really sit with your response. Be easy on yourself with the answer, this is a process.

You can use this with yourself or with another person and ask them the questions. The idea behind this method is to continue to release emotions until you reach either a neutral or a happy place. For me, I released anger, frustration, resentment, fear then annoyance which eventually got me to a neutral place.  With each round my negative feeling state lessened.

Our emotions are layered and we must work through the layers to find neutral. The nice thing about Sedona is the speed at which you are able to shift. An experience like this for me took as little as 10 minutes to find neutral or happiness. Once you work this technique a few times you’ll find it to be as fast as it is easy to use.

For more information on the Sedona Method go to: www.sedona.com

We all have our bad days. Many times when we are having a bad day we reach for potato chips, ice cream, alcohol or another vice that (temporarily) makes us feel better.    

When we get tripped up and fall into a bad day one idea to get us back into balance is food. Before we go on an eating binge, hang on, there are certain types of foods to help us back to happiness.

Let’s take a look at the nuts and bolts behind this theory. There are two ideas to examine:

1.  Negative thoughts and emotions carry an energetic vibration that is very low (feels heavy), versus happy thoughts and emotions which carry a much higher vibration (feels lighter).

2. The law of attraction teaches us that “like attracts like.”

So we can conclude that when we are feeling down, we crave something that has a similar vibrational match to our mood, like the vibration of candy bars, potato chips, ice cream or something similar.

One solution to help lift us out of our sadness is to choose foods with a higher vibration. If we are eating foods with a higher vibration then (because of law of attraction) we could begin to feel better.

Foods with the highest vibration are “live” (or uncooked) like raw fruits and vegetables.

Sometimes when we feel the need to be comforted, an alternative choice are foods that are warm like soups, stews or steamed vegetables. These foods are cooked but still hold a higher vibration (because of the vegetables) than fried or sugary sweets.

So the next time you feel you need an emotional boost, eat your fruits and veggies. They help to your energy to vibrate higher, in your heart, the same place happiness resides.

Have you ever left your house and felt great-happy, joyful, just in  a  good mood, and run your errands only to come home feel fatigued, stressed, and angry or some other negative emotion?  Yes, maybe your errands fatigued you or maybe stressed you or did they? Have you ever met a friend for lunch, a nice lunch, and left feeling some negative emotions and you don’t know why? When we feel negative emotions “out of the blue” and can’t put our finger on where it came from it’s probably not ours!

Here’s what happens:

Quantum physics has proven that when you break the human body down to the smallest particle, it’s energy vibrating. Likewise, our thoughts and emotions are also energy. Negative thought or negative emotion vibrates slower (which is why it feels heavier) and positive thought or emotion vibrates fast (which is why it feels light). Our energy field expands when we are in a good place, in fact, the more we step into a happy, or positive emotional place and feel it, the larger our energy field expands. Just to give you an idea, your energy field (if you are in a really great mood) can be in a 30 foot radius outside of your body.

Someone that is in a bad mood has dense, heavy energy around them and their field may be only inches off of their body. When you with your huge energy field, sweeps through their energy field, you pick up all of their “stuff,” all of their negative emotions. Now you have someone else’s despair, anger, frustration, stress etc. in your field and it weighs you down. This can happen at the grocery store, the mall, work, at lunch with friends etc.

A few of my own examples: A while back I had coffee with a friend. I had just finished writing a new workshop that I had been working on and was on cloud 9! We met for coffee, she had a smile on her face the whole time and things seemed great. However, I left there feeling so exhausted and depressed (out of the blue) and could not wait to get home to lie down and take a nap. I got home and before lying down I went outside and did a few things to “clear my field” and my energy bounced back to where I was before our coffee. I called my friend and I asked her how she felt during coffee and she said she was great until the end when we were getting ready to leave. She was hoping to see the guy she wanted to date and she didn’t and immediately felt depressed and exhausted. She had to go home and take a nap! So I picked up on her emotions, cleared them and “my” depression and fatigue immediately lifted and I went on with my great day. Another example happened recently with my husband. I was in a really energized, good mood, ready to stay up late and work after the kids were in bed. He got home from work and we had a conversation, after that my energy began to get low. I begrudgingly finished making dinner and could not wait to crawl into bed. I told my kids to call my husband for dinner and he was taking a bath and had fallen asleep! He came out and could not stop yawning. We put the kids to bed at 8:30 and crawled into bed, both of us exhausted. I lay there for a moment and remembered how energized I was, I traced it back to our conversation and realized his emotional state “slid” after our conversation and I picked up on him! I cleared myself and felt much better again. He later told me that your conversation really made him feel “off” emotionally. What you can do if this happens to you/clearing techniques:

1. Stomp your feet outside on the earth (or inside if it’s freezing out) and shake your arms then legs, as if throwing the energy off of them. You can also brush (with your hand) the energy off of your arms and legs as well. Hold the intention that you are shedding all energy and emotion that is not yours.
2. If you are a yoga person, the beginning of the sun salutation where you sweep your hands over your head, cleanses your energy/auric field.
3. Draw figure 8’s or the Infiniti symbol in your energy field, all over, big and small.
4. Visualize yourself taking a shower with beautiful cleansing light washing over your body and energy field. Again, hold the intention that you are cleansing your field of all negative energy and emotions that are not yours.

Awareness is the key to this. Pay attention to how you feel and when your feelings shift. It’s amazing how often we lose our happiness because of someone else’s emotions on us. Enjoy these easy techniques for maintaining your balanced emotional place.