It is because I am direct with you and a straight shooter that I care about you. Let your YES mean YES, and your “No” mean “No.” One of the commitments I work to live by is… If it’s not a ‘HELL YES’” - meaning a jump up in the air, OMG-I-am-so-excited, dance-my-ass-off-EEEEEEEEEEEEK-Yipee - than it’s a “no.” This was a hard-fought lesson when I was a people-pleasing, please-everyone-love-me, addict’s daughter with daddy issues, but as I started to listen more to my soul, my heart, and trust my gut, and believe in myself more, I saw that me sacrificing my soul to please others served NO ONE. So I stopped. And I started saying “Yes” only to what I thought was 100% aligned. And, sure, sometimes, telling a friend a “no” or a client a “no” or telling a customer a “no” feels kinda crappy… at the moment. When I told my Pilates clients that I had to close my studio (aka a “no” to training them anymore), it felt sooooo freaking hard. I loved my clients. Some I’d been working with for nearly a decade. But, at the cost of my soul? Or my mission? Or my dreams? TOTALLY WORTH IT. And actually, for my clients who became coaching clients, it actually ended up serving them MORE than just a good workout - it changed their life! That’s what happens when you say YES to your soul, and “no” to the things that are not in alignment with your highest and best. Because your highest and best, is also everyone else’s highest and best, and it’s inspiring them to also live in their highest and best, which is inspiring others to live in their highest and best.
“I tears. I cry.”
“I tears. I cry,” he whimpered to me with his puffy lower lip sticking out as he wiped away the two tear strains rolling down his cheek. “Everybody cries, baby. Mama cries. Daddy cries. Ma cries. Pa cries. It’s okay to cry,” I say to Declan, “It just shows that you care so deeply.” At that moment Declan mostly cared about not having Saline solution blown up his nose and having an ow-wow-wow. But a poignant lesson, nonetheless, no matter how small or big the problem may seem. Sometimes as positive-forward-thinking leaders we feel the pressure to always be “on,” meaning we always have to be positive and forward-thinking. Nonsense. You’re not an automoton. You’re human. Feelings hit. They happen. It’s natural and normal to feel feelings - all of them. And, yes, positive thinkers, that includes feeling sad, angry, peeved, frustrated, vengeful, rage, shame, guilt, fear, and the rest of the glorious spectrum of feelings that we have. When you suppress them, repress them or try to escape them, it only makes feelings WORSE. That’s when it comes down to a choice - a choice to hold onto them to bury them in a shit-pile of fear, shame, and guilt for being HUMAN in the first place!
The Key to Defeating Fear
It’s easy to slip into doubt and fear. Doubt and fear are normal, human emotions. Everyone, from plebeians to queen, has experienced it. A Queen, however, knows just how much weight Fear can toss and for how long, before she kicks that b*tch right back to where she belongs...in the minds of the mediocre. Fear will sit on your throne and rule your life if you let her, as she warps and rots your dream from the inside out, like an insipid virus. Her spies creep in through the catacombs of doubt, where the buried voices of those long gone echo. Her armies surround your gates, waiting, daring you to expand, to reach higher, to climb rather, to grow bigger, to go beyond where you are now. For at that moment you do, she is right there to push back.
Conduct yourself with candor, Queen. 👑
“You gotta want kids if you want to be with me.” He was 19 years older than me. In his first marriage, they had agreed not to have children. I was falling in love with him. I also knew I wanted kids. And I knew he would make a fantastic father. I wasn’t about to compromise on what I wanted. But, I was willing to walk away if I couldn’t have it all. So, I figured I’d come right out with it. Why beat around the bush, right? Yet, so often in our communication, we speak implicitly. We hint. We imply. We drop clues. But, come right out and say what you want and that you want it… To be totally and brutally honest, well that’s just brutal, right? Or is it or is it brutal to pretend you want something you don’t want, dance around the topic for years and then get your heart smashed because it didn’t happen. To me, the latter seems far more brutal with time, effort, and energy lost. It’s much easier to rip a bandaid off than to unstitch a gangrenous wound of implication. Being direct, candid, explicit with your communication allows not only you to know exactly where you stand and what you want, but others as well.
Think your customers can’t pay when in crisis?
“It feels wrong to charge money for my work right now,” my client said to me, trying to convince me of her position. If you ever want to see my enneagram-8 coach-mode come out, say something like this in a session with me, and I’m more than happy to go there. (It’s why my clients pay me.) “Let me ask you this, in a couple of weeks, do you think this situation will get better or worse?” She paused for a moment, “Worse.” “So what’s will be your excuse then about why you’re not charging for your services?” Discover why it’s not your job to decide whether the can or cannot “afford” your services. And it is certainly not your job to dictate how or if they “should” spend money on your products and services. Learn why, as a business owner, it is your responsibility to keep selling, so we keep our economy going on the blog now.
Be a Good Parent
I’ll never forget holding that bouquet of pregnancy tests in my hand. I’d peed four times to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. It couldn’t be, right? This was supposed to be hard for me? No. Nope. I was pregnant. Oh. My. God. I was paralyzed with fear and I’d like to say excitement, but really it was mostly fear. I walked out of our bathroom with the awful medical green tile into our yellow padded voice over studio. It felt appropriate to deliver the news in a padded room. Spike was on the phone with one of his investors. As I stand there without saying anything, my handshaking with the sticks, immobilized. “Holy shit,” I thought to myself, “This is happening.” Spike noticed me in the doorframe and mouthed “You’re pregnant?” I could barely manage a nod. I’ll never forget the smile that grew across that man’s face. I had to borrow that confidence because I was freaking terrified.
THIS doesn’t look like Marie Forleo at all.
Why High Achievers Struggle to Meditate
“I can barely sit still for 5 minutes.” I used to pride myself on always doing. DOING. DOING. DOING. Where my high achievers at, yo! Sitting still was NOT my jam. Give me music blasting in my ears and 30-minutes at a steady clip of 6.0 miles per hour and I was golden. Moving meditations I could do. Running, pilates, pole dancing, anything that allowed my body to just release and express and let go. But... Being alone and quiet in my head used to be a dangerous place for me to rest in because I wasn’t at rest. I wasn’t at peace with myself. I warred with the light and the darkness. It was then that my mom said four words that stuck with me forever, “Be kind to yourself.”
Perfect doesn’t sell. THIS Does.
It’s the Jennifer Lawrence v. Anne Hathaway paradigm. The more human you appear to be, the more people relate to you. The more perfect you seem, the more people subconsciously distrust you. But what do you do if you’re a card-carrying perfectionist? Discover on the blog why being perfect doesn’t sell and how to tap into your unique, authenticity so you sell as 100% yourself - mistakes, flaws, silly faces, and all.
The Business Game with COVID-19
The landscape of business may have shifted. But the game is still the same. If you have a business that is even remotely online, you’re in the game, babe. What’s that game you ask? Solving problems. Business solves problems. Every product, every service, everything that has ever been created was to solve a problem. If you as an entrepreneur are seeing this COVID-19, quarantine, stay at home pandemic as a problem, you’re not looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Discover on the blog how your business can provide solutions to the world’s problems - even if you’re not a doctor or front line worker.
The Energy of Cost vs. The Energy of an Investment
Everything is a form of energy. Food is. Relationships are. Business is. Money is. You receive energy. You generate energy - meaning you have it circling about you in some way. And you spend energy. It’s ALL energy. Ever spend your time with someone who, after an hour or so, you felt completely drained, zapped of life, like you just needed to take a nap. You received their energy and spent your own energy...and not in the best way, or in the best life-giving relationship. The same is true for our relationship with money. HOW we spend money is just as important tas WHAT we spend it on and WHY we are spending it. And it comes down to one simple principle of money...
What No One Tells You About the Law of Attraction
Like attracts like. The Secret. You can manifest money as you desire. Choose to attract what you want in your life - more money, more health, more business, more amazing relationships. All totally true. All 100% possible. But what happens when your actions and behavior, consciously or unconsciously, is out of fear or scarcity? See, that’s the part of the Law of Attraction that’s not so sexy. Like attracts like after all. Scarcity breeds more scarcity. If you’re operating right now from a place of scarcity and fear - hunkering down, budgeting, getting “needy” for clients - you will absolutely 100% attract prospects and clients who are doing the same.
Discover the Magic of Your “Genius Zone”
If you’re experiencing a struggle right now in your virtual business with the dolla dolla bills flowing in - there’s no freaking excuse. A restaurant, gym, brick and mortar, or event-based business, yes, they’re getting hit hard right now. But if you’ve got online biz, or even a portion of your biz online and you’re not bringing in money now when MORE people are online and doing business online than ever before....then, it’s both because of what you’re doing and more importantly, it’s because you’re not BEING the dang thing consistently. Questioning yourself. Doubting. Delaying on doing those things. Getting mired in the spiral of “productive procrastination” - doing all the things - except for those in your genius zone.
Surrender the Form
On the flight over to Australia, I got MY fill of Marvel movies. International flights used to be my jam. Strapped in a seat, I’d get so much work done. Laser focus, baby! That was before Declan. When we took our first trip overseas to Australia, that was a 16-hour lesson for me in surrendering to what was. Declan was one at the time. I was squished into the middle seat between Spike and a large Samoan man, holding my overly exhausted baby boy, who then proceeded to nurse...for the WHOLE flight. Yeah. That was rough. I learned to surrender the form of how I traveled and the expectation to be able to get ANYTHING done while on a plane with a child...other than taking care of my kid.
The Most Important Skillset You Can Train
Never before has there been more of a need to tap into your resilience. This world right now requires GRIT. The hunger to get back up again, to go back into the proverbial arena, and to show up boldly like never before. People are looking for leaders. I don't care whether you have one person following you, 20 people in your group, or 20,000. It's not about the number, it's about what you INSPIRE and IGNITE within those people.
Time to face the shadows
Get your 20/20 hindsight NOW.
Ever look back on an event in your life and see EXACTLY why that happened to you? You see the lessons, the learning, the growth. Maybe you see how it shaped you as a human to be more compassionate or more ambitious or more organized. Maybe you look back on that thing with appreciation, or gratitude or just a deep satisfaction that you were strong enough and had the resilience to pull through, even when things looked their bleakest. Maybe you’re just fuckjng grateful you survived, because, there were times when you didn’t think you could...but you did.
Discover the Healing Treasure
One of my favorite books to read to Declan is “What Do You Do with a Problem.” (I recommend it to my adult clients as well...as basically, everyone.) In the story, a little child discovers he has a problem. He didn’t want it. He didn’t ask for it. He really didn’t like having a problem...hey, who does, right? He tries to avoid it. He tries to pretend it’s not there. He tries to ignore it but it’s still there. Learn more on how to tap into the present moment.