What do managing time well, communicating the truth and manifesting have in common?
They all lead to sustainable happiness and they all elude us regularly. Most practitioners treat symptoms; at Handel we study how to solve people’s unhappiness at its source. Always at the source of unhappiness we find breaches in Personal Integrity®, or something that is out of alignment. Maybe your actions don’t line up with your intentions. Or, your words don’t line up with your feelings. Or your feelings don’t line up with who you really want to be. The bad news is, this leads to a whole lot of suffering. The good news is, you can change all of it. Let me give you a taste:
When Your Words Don’t Line Up with Your Feelings
Tell the Truth. We know enough not to construct a building on quicksand and yet we often try to have conversations, run meetings, make plans or even physically create things before we have cleared out what’s already there. When we tell the truth about “what’s in the space”, we can see it for what it is and often remove it as an obstacle. Please stop trying to be happy without telling the truth about what you are unhappy about. Most people believe that talking about it makes it more true, or puts emphasis on it.
We have found that when people let the cat out of the bag about what’s bothering them, be it about themselves, relationships, their work life or their finances, fixing it becomes that much easier. It’s counterintuitive to the “chicken” and “brat” inside your mind that “just don’t want to deal.” First, you learn to tell the truth to yourself, sort out your chicken and brat voices and excuses until you land on yourself as “the one” who can have things go a different way by thinking and acting differently. From here, owning up to your own lack of action, also makes you stronger when it comes to telling the truth to others.
Please stay tuned for upcoming blogs and offerings specifically centered around how to have difficult conversations with important people. This is one of the most important skills you can develop to sustain your happiness. Nothing blows my day more than avoiding an important conversation and nothing gives me more pumped up awesome energy when I have the guts to have one and live to tell the tale. You know you’ve had that experience; now it’s time to get really good at it.
When Your Actions Don’t Line Up with Your Intentions
Become a Master of Time. Once you become a truth teller, your priorities get a lot clearer. Working on your integrity means your YESes in life get stronger and realer, as will your NOs. This is a beautiful maturing process as you come to own each of your choices and then empower each moment of activity as one you chose and in which you are fully invested. Here you find your happiness in choosing your most important areas of focus and offering presence as you take powerful actions aligned with your dreams. Time is the currency of life. Becoming a master of your relationship to time brings you sustainable happiness.
When Feelings Don’t Line Up with How You Want to Be
Become an Intentional Manifester. You are learning to tell the truth, and to powerfully choose your actions and show up to execute. You can feel your moods more strongly than ever now and that is the last realm to tackle. Not only are you in control of your thinking, your choices, your actions, but you are also in control of your feelings. Thank goodness! We really think we wake up in moods versus that our thoughts give us our feelings, and our actions inform that, and we have control over both. We have so much more power than we think. It’s time to take control of that imagination of yours; you are using it all the time unconsciously. When you start with the truth about how you think and feel, and clear that out, there is a foundation on which to build your creative use of imagination.
Just for today I want you to try and flip 10 negative thoughts into positive ones. You will find it challenging and requiring great creativity. Our minds get stuck in ruts and we become very used to what we think is “really possible.” The practice of actively manifesting for your dreams actually feels very much like developing a new skill. Please do not think it should come naturally. The way to have new feelings, the ones that are consistent with the kind of man or woman you want to be, is to have new thoughts. So start practicing your thought flipping today. Be a great lawyer in your own head, but today argue for what IS possible, not what isn’t. Please leave a comment about how that went!
On November 11-13, I have joined up with the leaders in the field of health and wellness to guide you on a journey of self-reflection about what makes and keeps you happy to the core. We’ll cover food, spiritual practice, exercise, mental exercises, time management, truth telling and manifesting. This will all take place at the beautiful and peaceful Menla Mountain Retreat Center in the Catskills. By the time you’re done, your toolbox will be overflowing. The year is quickly coming to a close; please take some time out to ensure your most important job, having a great life, is getting done. If you can’t come to our retreat, please plan one of your own.
Love, Laurie
P.S.- I invite you to attend The How of Sustainable Health and Happiness at Menla Mountain Retreat, November 11-13 with me. Click the link to read more or register now.
