coaching – Luminous Leanings

5 Presence Hacks for Stress & Anxiety

Relax your heart until you are actually face-to-face with the exact place where it hurts. Stay open and receptive so you can be present right where the tension is. You must be willing to be present right at the place of the tightness and pain, and then relax and go even deeper. This is very deep growth and transformation. But you will not want to do this. You will feel tremendous resistance to doing this, and that’s what makes it so powerful. As you relax and feel the resistance, the heart will want to pull away, to close, to protect, and to defend itself. Keep relaxing. Relax your shoulders and relax your heart. Let go and give room for the pain to pass through you. It’s just energy. Just see it as energy and let it go.
― Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

If I know one cure-all for life’s many ailments, whether it’s stress, heartache, fear, or exhaustion – it’s presence. Why is it so powerful to pull us back to what is true? Because it’s the only thing that’s true.

Think about it – when you can trace your suffering back to your thoughts or a story in your mind, you’ve got your answer: suffering is a delusion. When we aren’t present with what’s really going on, we suffer! When we squish it down, cover it over, we shut our hearts off. When we turn our hearts off to pain, we also turn them off to love.

The quality of presence is love. So turning toward presence – especially when we’re suffering and identifying with the suffering (e.g. “This is my fault. I feel bad, therefore I am bad. I did something wrong, and I deserve this.”), is a radical act of self-compassion.

And that’s why it’s so effing hard!

So let’s hack it. 5 shortcuts to presence have proven super helpful to me whenever I’m stuck in a shame spiral, feeling completely disconnected from my higher self, or for when I can recognize I’m in a delusion.

Recognizing we’re in a delusion can be the hardest part. But if you’re suffering – take a step back and ask yourself:

What is the story I’m believing right now?
Could it be possible that my thoughts are real but not true?
Whose voice is it that I’m hearing in my head?
Am I resisting presence, wisdom, or some higher truth in this moment?

Once you recognize you’re in a delusion, choose to consciously turn towards presence with these 5 simple hacks:

1. Breath Games

Breath games are my absolute favorite way to return to presence. You could call it “breathing”, but how boring is that? We’re always breathing – the key is to do it consciously.

Breathing is accessible as long as there is breath in your lungs – no one can take it from you. That simple power can help embolden you to take control of the rest of your experience.

Breathing deeply signals to your brain that it’s time to relax, as when you are sleeping. You can reverse-engineer this sensation in the body at any time through the power and control of your breath.

Begin by noticing the quality of your breath. Is it long or short? Deep or shallow? Painful, pleasurable, or neutral? Where do you notice it in the body – is it in your lungs, chest, throat, belly, or under the nostrils?

Take a deep breath in, filling your lungs completely. Imagine you are filling them top to bottom, left to right, backwards and forwards. Now, notice the space between inhaling and exhaling. Finally, exhale the breath completely noticing your lungs emptying, the way you noticed them filling.

Repeat this deep breathing 3 more times, then let your breath return to normal. What do you notice already?

Next, practice 4-7-8 breathing. Breathe in to the count of four, hold to the count of seven, and extend your exhale to the count of eight. According to Dr. Andrew Weil, this breath technique may help with reducing anxiety, falling asleep, managing cravings, and controlling or reducing anger responses (source).

Sometimes, when I can’t remember the exact counts for each, I simply make my exhale twice as long as my inhale with a gap in between. This breath always helps me come back to presence. When my mind is focused on the count, everything else just falls away.

Another technique I adore is alternate nostril breathing. Make your hand into a “hang loose” gesture, with your thumb and pinky extended. Sitting in a meditative pose with your eyes closed, begin breathing deeply in and out. Place your thumb on your right nostril and breathe in through your left. Now, remove your thumb and plug your left nostril with your pinky. Exhale. Inhale again through your left nostril, then switch so that your thumb is plugging your right nostril again. You will always inhale through the same nostril which you just exhaled through before switching fingers, keeping your hand in the “hang loose” pose throughout.

This breathing technique slows the amount of air coming in and out of the lungs, which can help you naturally extend the breath. Plus, you’re very intensely focused on the technique, which can help quiet all other mental noise.

2. Aromatherapy

Another instantaneous way to hack into the present moment is your olfactory senses! Did you know that your olfactory glands in your brain are tied to your central nervous system in such a special, ancient way? This is why smell is the strongest sense associated with memory.

How it works: Our olfactory bulb sensors are actually part of the brain, and send messages directly to the most primitive brain centers where they influence emotions and memories, and “Higher” centers where they can affect conscious thought. In fact, this is the only place where our central nervous system is directly exposed to our environment (source). Pretty cool, huh?

I love keeping essential oils in my bag, so I can take a whiff of lavender or rosemary when I’m feeling anxious. I also keep peppermint on hand for its anti-inflammatory powers in case anyone is feeling muscle aches or cramps.

Lighting a candle instantly sanctifies a space, don’t you think?

Sometimes I simply brew some herbs or spices on my stove top to add some much needed humidity and aromatherapy to my desert home.

Beyond the day-to-day functional aromatherapy, burning incense is a beautiful way to step into sacred self-care ritual. Whether you’re meditating, doing at-home yoga, or chanting a kirtan, light some incense beforehand and see how it anchors and grounds your ritual!

3. Mantra

Mantra comes and goes for me. There are times in my life I can trace back to a specific mantra, and there are seasons where this just wasn’t in my practice. It is currently a part of my morning ritual – just after finishing my meditation, I sit on my yoga mat with my half-cold coffee in hand and ask myself, “What wisdom will I need to be reminded of today, that I can access right now?”

When I’m still halfway in that quiet and Divine space of meditation, mantras have a way of just coming to me. Yet another example of how the power of intention and receptive energy can be all it takes to manifest what we seek.

I find my mantra throughout the day, nourishing me, anchoring me and protecting me from some pretty dark delusions. It’s not always the sole solution, but usually it’s enough to bring me back to earth. For example, I had an embodied experience of primal fear the other day. Because of my mantra practice, my impulse was to place my hand on my heart and say to myself, “I am safe. I am loved. I am safe. I am loved.” Just like that. Over and over.

Let me tell you – my felt experience instantly shifted from one of fight or flight to a more present, receptive, calm state (hello, parasympathetic nervous system!).

It may sound corny or woo woo, but being able to tell yourself what you most need to hear is the incredibly powerful. It instantly transports you back to presence. You tend to believe the things you tell yourself (inner critic, anyone?). And – like the breath – it’s always accessible to you.

Think about that: Whatever you most need to hear is always just a mantra away. Adopt a mantra for your hour, day, week, year, and/or your entire life. Say it in your head or say it aloud – it makes no difference. Write it down and stick it on your mirror, your steering wheel, your cat. Play with mantra, and see how your relationship to presence and to yourself begins to shift.

4. Routine Hooks

Routine hooks are my new favorite thing! My sister reminded me that Eckhart Tolle writes about how brushing our teeth can be a good container for presence. We do it everyday, hopefully a couple times a day, but how quickly do we check out during this routine activity!

“Most people treat the present moment as if it were an obstacle that they need to overcome. Since the present moment is Life itself, it is an insane way to live.”
– Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

This got me thinking about the subreddit, “Shower Thoughts”. The basic premise is that people have their best thoughts in the shower. It’s a magical, mystical place where we spend 5 or 20 minutes each day, and we do it so robotically that our brains can be entirely devoted to “more productive things.”

Oh, doesn’t our ego just love that?! The instant transport from the present moment to some place where we feel we are really needed – solving some problem, practicing for some inevitable conflict, or planning some ideal fantasy.

But, like Eckhart says, the present moment is literally all we have. It’s all we’re guaranteed. So let’s start using routine activity to jar us back to the present moment. You can do it in the shower, when you’re driving, brushing your teeth, watering your plants, going up or down the stairs, riding the elevator, waiting in the checkout line – anywhere!

You don’t have to try and be perfectly present 24/7, but it can be helpful to associate one of these everyday activities as a trigger for presence. I’m committing to breathing and anchoring in presence while I brush my teeth. At least my toothbrush has a two-minute timer, so this should be relatively simple!

5. Body Scan

Who is our constant companion, no matter where we go or how much time passes? Who can guarantee they will be there when all others fail us? Our beautiful bodies!

I believe the body is a portal to a Divine experience of love, presence, gratitude, ease, and even pleasure.

My go-to falling asleep trick is to do a body scan. It also works wonders for shaking me back into the present moment whenever I notice my attention wandering.

Simply start with your feet on the floor. Close your eyes if possible. Breathe. Feel your feet, and the supportive ground beneath them. Let that energy travel upward into your ankles, calves, knees, thighs, buttocks, low back, belly, solar plexus, chest, upper back, shoulders, neck, upper arms, forearms, wrists, hands, fingers, face, crown of the head.

Learning to inhabit each body part on its own and as part of a connected whole is a skill you can develop. It will help you immensely with anxiety attacks, insomnia, fear and depression.

Another technique is to find a space that feels neutral in your body and focus on it. After some time, find a place that feels pleasurable and focus on it. Whether neutral or pleasurable, imagine the sensation growing and expanding throughout your whole body. Allow this process several minutes.

Ever-Present Presence

Presence is SO important in the fight against overwhelm, anxiety and even attention deficiency. It is all too easy for me to flip on a podcast and zone out at the end of a long day. Our brains love the feeling of learning something new! But presence benefits us in everlasting ways, it’s just harder to cultivate and feel the immediate benefits, at first.

This work gets easier, I promise. For me, it ebbs and flows. It is a lifelong journey. There are seasons where I’m completely feeling my presence – vibing with the shimmery sensations during a body scan or tearing up with wordless wisdom emanating from within.

The good news is – Presence is always available to you. You just have to consciously decide to turn toward it. Luckily, these 5 hacks have got you covered!

I’d love to hear from you, Dear One! What is your favorite way to connect with presence? Have you tried any of these 5 hacks, and which one worked best for you?

Be well & take gentle self-care, my loves! And enjoy Valentine’s Day Week – don’t forget to be your own Valentine & soul mate first. If you need help, I’ve created a 12-week program to coach you through just that.

7 Simple Steps to Create Your Self-Care Plan

As a self-care & self-compassion coach, I work with clients to develop personalized plans for their self-care rituals & routines! I believe self-care is the foundation for self-compassion. With a routine & structure in place, it’s much easier to find the time to drop into that space of presence & gratitude where true self-love can blossom.

Self-care is near and dear to my heart, and my understanding of it radically evolved when I read the book Self-Compassion by Dr. Kristen Neff. She writes:

When we soothe our own pain, we are tapping into the mammalian care-giving system. And one important way the care-giving system works is by triggering the release of oxytocin. Research indicates that increased levels of oxytocin strongly increase feelings of trust, calm, safety, generosity and connectedness and facilitates the ability to feel warmth and compassion for ourselves. Oxytocin is released in a variety of social situations, including when a mother breastfeeds her child, when parents interact with their young children or when someone gives or receives a soft, tender caress. Because thoughts and emotions have the same effect on our bodies whether they’re directed to ourselves or to others, this research suggests that self-compassion may be a powerful trigger for the release of oxytocin (source).

If you think you don’t have time for self-care, this post is for you! I’m here to show you how simple it can really be. You don’t have to self-care by yourself – I’m here to show you the way! Grab a blank sheet of paper or your journal and a pen, and cozy up in a comfortable, undisturbed spot. Follow these 7 simple steps to create your own self-care plan, & start feeling the self-love in no time!

1. Evaluate Your Current Level of Self-Care

Before you begin creating your plan, it’s important to consider your baseline for self-care. If it helps, you can close your eyes and ask yourself the following questions:

How accessible is self-care for me right now?
When was the last time I did something to care for myself?
How does it feel to care about my own well-being?

Take your time as you consider this. It is not easy work! From these questions, you can assess your current level of self-care. Write it down on a scale of 1-10. Really dig into it, and get curious about your rating.

2. Envision Your Self-Care Goals, Set Your Intention & Manifest

This step has 3 parts. The first is to envision your self-care goals. Perhaps you already know you’d like to work out 3 times a week or start a daily journaling practice. Step two is to write it down & get super specific. This is a visioning exercise, so it doesn’t need to be in the form of goals yet. Think of them as hopes & dreams. Create a Pinterest board for inspiration or a literal vision board collage, if that feels right.

Thirdly, a manifestation exercise can help you draw these dreams into your reality. Sit or lie down comfortably with your eyes closed, and simply daydream in detail about you caring for yourself in these ways. What does the room look like? What props do you have around you? What activities are you doing? What are you saying to yourself? What is your general attitude, thoughts & emotions toward self-care? How does it affect your entire life? When you come out of the visualization, edit your written intention as necessary based on what you saw and learned.

3. Set SMART Goals

A SMART goal is a goal that is given the tools to come true! SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. Write SMART down the left-hand side of a piece of paper. Across the top of the paper, create self-care categories based on your intentions. For example, if you intend to wake feeling well-rested, write “Sleep” for one of your categories. My categories include sleep, exercise, yoga, meditation, journaling, reading, cooking, and outdoor time.

Now, create a goal for each category that is SMART! For Sleep, I could write: I will get at least 8 hours of sleep every night of the week. Check it against the SMART criteria:

S – This goal is specific because it specifies how much sleep I plan to get.

M – I can measure this goal by checking off whether or not I got 8 hours.

A – This is definitely attainable, as it won’t wreck my current routine and habits.

R – Getting 8 hours of sleep each night is relevant for me, as I know it’s the minimum I need to flourish and it fits into my broader self-care goals of being healthy and vibrant.

T – This is a time-bound goal, as it mentions I plan to get 8 hours of sleep each night.

Continue writing your SMART goals for each of your remaining categories. Some categories may have more than one SMART goal – that’s perfectly fine!

4. Break Them Down Into Habits

Now take the SMART goal and make it a habit. For example, if my SMART goal was to cook healthy, affordable meals 4 times per week, habits would need to include: creating a meal plan and shopping list, going to the grocery on Sundays, prepping the ingredients on Sunday night, and scheduling in the time needed to cook 4 nights per week after work. A goal can be broken down into many habits. Make sure you think through all of its angles before moving on to the next one.

5. Acknowledge Your Barriers & Brainstorm Solutions

Taking a look at these habits across all your goals, envision adapting your lifestyle to hold them. Write down any red flags that come up, and sticky places where you can see things going the most poorly or being the most difficult to adopt. Draw a vertical line and write at the top “Solutions.” How can you solve for each of these barriers? If you’re concerned you won’t be able to sit in meditation for 20 minutes each day because your kids are constantly screaming for you, rework your day so you can meditate before they wake up or after they go to bed, or perhaps find an environment where you can guarantee you won’t be disturbed. If you write down many possible solutions, circle the one you’re going to try out first. If that ends up not working, move on to another one and try that! This is an exercise in figuring out what works best for you.

6. Set Up Accountability Systems

Accountability truly is the key for habit maintenance. Studies show folks are 65 percent more likely to meet a goal after committing to another person. The chance of success then increases to 95 percent when they build in ongoing meetings with their partners to check in on their progress (source). Whoa! That’s nearly guaranteed success.

For each habit or goal, write down one accountability measure you will put in place to make sure you stick to it – at least for the first 66 days. They say it takes that long to really form a habit (source). Accountability can mean finding a buddy, setting a phone alarm, or even signing up for one of these apps that sets consequences (like paying money to your most hated causes) for failing to meet your goals!

If I wanted to work out 3 times per week, I might ask my best friend to text me every Saturday night to ask me how many times I had exercised that week. I could suggest she set an alarm on her phone to remind her, and ask if I can reciprocate with anything she wanted to be held accountable for. Another great accountability measure is to announce a 30-day challenge you are starting on social media. The pressure of posting a picture of yourself meditating every day for 30 days will help you find the time and willpower to meet your goals!

You could also set your alarm for your bedtime each night and wake up time each morning, or write in your schedule the allotted time to run the errand, leave for the spin class, make it happen! Remember, write down at least one accountability measure for each goal or habit.

7. Journal & Check-In Along the Way

Lastly, don’t forget to journal and check in with yourself along the way! I recommend setting aside 10 minutes on Sundays (or whenever you do your weekly planning) to assess your progress. Stick to it for the first couple of months, and then see if you want to switch anything up. Reconnect with your intentions and the why behind your desire to self-care. This is a life-long journey! Sometimes the care feels robotic (mine did this morning!), and other times we are chomping at the bit to set aside this sacred time. Notice how easy or difficult it is and how it changes, and the reasons for it. You could design your own self-care tracker and leave space for journaling your emotions around the practices, what you are learning about yourself, and how you might like to adjust them in the future.

Intentions are made up of pure, beautiful manifesting powerful energy to make our lives more vibrant and fulfilled. Self-care intentions are our intuitive sense of how we need to better care for ourselves in order to fulfill our life’s purpose. Goals and habits are where the rubber meets the road. They’re not always a ton of fun to set, implement and stick to, but without them our intentions are pretty meaningless. In time, these accountability measures and the discomfort that comes with setting a new goal will fade to the background and all that will remain is the automatic and desirous joy that comes with your self-care practice. When my morning yoga and meditation routine transitioned from a to-do item to check off my list to a sacred hour that I fight off all competitive time-stealers from, I knew it had morphed from a habit into a practice.

Be sure to check out my posts on creating a bedtime routine, morning ritual, and a Sunday checklist for your week!

I hope these 7 simple steps help you create your own self-care plan! I’d love to hear how it goes in the comments below. Be well and take gentle self-care!

10 Reasons You Should Hire a Life Coach

I am a true believer that, no matter where you are in your life’s journey, a life coach can be a great support. If you are just starting to ask what your life purpose is, or if you are a strategic planning pro, having a skilled coach by your side can make all the difference. Read to the end of this post for your chance to win a free self-care coaching session with me!

Life coaching is a partnership with a professional space holder and accountability partner. As a self-care coach, I ask my clients powerful questions to unlock the hidden answers lying buried in their intuition. Session topics range from creating structure for creative entrepreneurs, to self-care for busy moms, to removing barriers for cultivating a sustainable meditation practice.

Receiving life coaching is such a profound experience! How often do you get a full hour to talk about your deepest vulnerabilities, desires, and inner dialogue with someone who has their complete attention on you? Who else can you go to knowing that they will offer space holding and guiding questions, rather than attempting to fix you?

No matter where you happen to be on your self-care journey, here are my 10 reasons why you should hire a life coach:

1. Everybody needs a good listen.

Do you ever try to vent to a friend, only to have them respond with a, “I know! The same thing happened to me…” or a, “You know what you should do…” Friends are people too, God love them, and sometimes they just don’t know how to hold space.

To hold space for someone means to become a container for them to pour their thoughts, ideas, and experiences into. We can’t hold space unless we ourselves have the space to hold. Spaciousness can be cultivated through meditation practice, self-care and training your awareness. Often times, our friends and loved ones simply don’t have the space to give us that we need in order to process.

Processing your experiences out loud with a trained active listener (i.e. life coach) is an extremely powerful experience. A life coach is there to guide your journey with deep questioning and space holding. Together, you identify your goals for the session and then make sure they get accomplished.

You will walk away from a session with a life coach feeling heard, seen, and deeply understood. Because you are! They have taken the time to listen intently and let you know that you are the expert in your own life, and your intuition is the wisdom guiding you forward.

2. You have big goals & dreams.

Is there something in life you want to accomplish, but don’t know where to start? Or maybe you’ve already taken a few steps and feel like you’re stumbling around in the dark? A life coach can be an effective accountability partner to shine the light on your path.

We all need 3 things to accomplish our goals in life – accountability, structure, and space. Accountability is necessary to make sure we don’t fall behind or let our inner critics get the best of us. We need structure to organize our strategy and keep on top of our common procrastination pitfalls. And space (there’s that word again) to process and share our learning along the way.

3. You’re secretly craving structure.

Whether you’re plotting for a huge bucket list-sized goal, or you’ve been wondering lately where your time is going, chances are you need some structure in your life. Structure doesn’t have to be rigid – structure, when balanced with lots of grace, can actually create more freedom in your life!

Think about it – if you had a plan in place for how you spend your time, you could spend less time worrying and procrastinating against getting started. Structure can mean a schedule, template, or outline for your day, week or year. Whatever your time frame, a life coach can help you create a plan for what you need to get done and when.

4. You could benefit from accountability.

Accountability partners help us remember our deepest intentions. When your intention is to wake up and go for a run every morning at 6am, a life coach can help make sure you follow through in a gentle, loving way. I often find with clients that just telling me their plan of action is enough to make sure they follow through. And I’m there in case they don’t, so we can identify what went wrong and adjust the plan accordingly!

5. You want to get to know yourself better.

“If we were not so single minded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves.” – Pablo Neruda

It seems like everyone on your insta feed lately is doing deep soul work. There is a cosmic shift going on, and a lot of people are waking up to their spiritual side. Whether you never dipped a toe in your own spiritual waters, or you just want to further evolve into a more purposeful and intentional person, life coaching can help.

Through intention-setting, powerful questioning, and exploring who you need to become in order to meet your goals, the life coaching relationship is designed to foster deeper self-learning. It’s only through learning what makes you you, and what your deepest desires are, that you can discover life’s potential.

6. You are aching for self-care, self-love, & self-compassion.

Maybe your inner dialogue is mostly negative, critical, and even hateful towards yourself (whether you’re conscious of it or not). Deep down, there is a sense that you could be treating yourself better. You could prioritize rest, nourishment and fulfillment over work or productivity.

You’ve seen #selfcare posts on instagram, but you’ve always equated it with mani-pedis or expensive shopping sprees. You’re yearning for something deeper, something you’ve only felt after a really good candlelit restorative yoga session or talking to a friend who really knows how to hold space.

Self-care is the maintenance of self-love. It’s where the rubber meets the road on our journey toward loving ourselves. Self-love requires unlearning that our worth comes from how much we can produce, and instead choosing to believe we are worthy of love intrinsically. If compassion is where our loving kindness meets suffering in the world, self-compassion is the salve for a hurting heart. Sometimes simply placing your hand on your heart and whispering to yourself, “I’m sorry you’re having a hard time right now,” is more than enough to mend our suffering. There is something deeply profound about practicing self-care, self-love and self-compassion – they are life changing!

My particular brand of life coaching is called self-care coaching. I help my clients learn what self-care, self-love and self-compassion look like in their lives, and how they can foster and nourish their relationship to Self. I believe changing the world begins with our relationship to Self – without it, how can we cultivate genuine compassion for others?

7. You want to learn more about & cultivate mindfulness.

Oh, mindfulness. A word often misused, misunderstood, and the subject of much discussion. Depok Chopra says he dislikes the word, as it sounds like your mind is supposed to be full, which is quite the opposite of the point. I like to distill mindfulness down to letting the activity you’re focused on – and only that activity – be the thing that fills your mind. Meaning, if you’re sitting, sit. If you’re walking, walk. If you’re performing rocket surgery, perform rocket surgery.

Mindfulness practice, or the training of our awareness, can help us cease so many forms of suffering. Although our minds have evolved to process and hold many thought threads at once, our being truly craves presence and simplicity. There’s something very grounding and reassuring about simply sitting on the earth, watching the leaves of a tree blow in the wind.

The truth is, it’s really that simple to meditate. Just sit and remind yourself that right now, you’re going to simply be. Each time thoughts arise, recognize them and then guide your awareness back to the present moment, the experience of sitting. It may be simple, but it’s hardly easy – especially in the beginning! A self-care coach can support you on your journey, provide resources, and guide your deep learning around what arises during your meditation practice.

If you sign up for my 1-on-1 self-care coaching program, Become Your Own Soul Mate, you’ll receive custom guided meditations that I’ll record with you in mind, calling you by name and tailoring the prompts to your unique journey. Apply now!

8. You want to create a self-care routine.

Self-care, this loving maintenance of ourselves, can look like many different things to different people. Maybe it’s a cup of soothing tea after a difficult day with your boss. Or perhaps it’s planning a pilgrimage to your ancestral homelands to do some deep DNA-level healing! Or it could be anywhere in between. Through self-care coaching, we journey together to find out what nourishing activities you can experiment with to develop a unique self-care plan that fits your life!

Some people like to know that every day they’re going to do an hour of yoga, 15 minutes of meditation, and write in their gratitude journal before they go to bed. Other people (myself included!) need more variety, and crave a diverse range of nurturing self-care experiences that heal different aspects of their being at different times. After all, we are cyclical beings and part of our process is to understand how our energy shifts through the different seasons of life. Whether it’s a restorative yoga class after a difficult week, or a solo dance party first thing when you wake up, self-care coaching can help you find the right self-care practices for you. Let a coach support your understanding of your self-care needs through these stages, so you can track and adjust your plan to make the next cycle filled with even more care and healing!

9. You want to grow in your time & energy management skills.

Have you ever crawled into bed at night and wondered, “Where did my day go?” How about, “Where did my energy go?” While we all get the same amount of time in the day, our energy is expandable and collapsible. Our industrial revolution-era minds and society can often make us feel as though our worth is tied up in how much we can output. But the truth is, every one has a different rhythm and energy, and chances are it will change over time.

Nevertheless, if we have goals that are in alignment with our purpose, we need to harness our energy force to work through our strategies and make things happen. A life coach can help you track and analyze where your time and energy are going each day, and how to cultivate boundaries to save your energy and time for the things that matter most to you. Managing your time and energy is a skill that can be nurtured with the help of a life coach.

10. You lack direction & want to discover your life’s purpose.

Or maybe you haven’t yet uncovered which goals are in alignment for you on your path. Your life’s purpose is the intersection of your greatest passions and the world’s needs. True fulfillment comes from helping others in the way that lights you up the most, and then pursuing the skills and experience needed to make it happen.

That might seem like a tall order, but you don’t have to go it alone. A life coach can be there to support and guide your journey, and hold you accountable to whatever goals you set out to achieve. Perhaps you’ve felt isolated and bad for not knowing your purpose yet, when it seems like everyone around you is chasing their dreams. Through powerful questioning and deep space holding, coaching can help you unlock your purpose and find meaningful fulfillment.

And now I’d love to hear from you, Dear Ones! Have you ever hired a life coach? Or have you considered it? What’s holding you back? Tell me in the comments below and you just might win a free self-care coaching session with me! 1 winner will be chosen on October 15th at random. 🙂

Habits, Motivation & Resilience

I am learning so much about habits, motivation and resilience as a life coach. I’ve always been fascinated by human psychology, and what makes or breaks the goals we set for ourselves. Coaching has taught me to see setbacks – not as failures – but as feedback. What a mindset shift!

Imagine if you could label your last missed goal, not as bad or a failure, but rather as non-judgmental feedback. Maybe you’d learn what went wrong without identifying with it, and even learn how to set yourself up for success next time. Most importantly, you would try again with less resistance because you wouldn’t feel weighed down by your own judgment. This is called having a growth mindset, and it is powerful.

The Anatomy of a Habit

When we dissect our habits, we can identify 4 parts: The Cue, The Action, The Reward, and the Feedback.

Let’s say you want to change your nighttime insta-scrolling in bed habit. The current cue is you get in bed. This signals to your brain to start the action, or pulling out your phone and tapping that pink and orange camera icon.

Next think about what you get out of it. What lights up that pleasure center in your brain? Get super visual with identifying the feeling behind the action. Perhaps it’s the sense of connection you feel to those you follow and those who follow you. Maybe it’s the inspiration of motivational quotes and beautiful images. Or maybe it’s just shutting off your brain and “unwinding” just before sleep to get your mind off of negative self-talk or work-related to anxiety. So what’s the problem? 😉 This is where the feedback comes in.

Clearly, despite it’s pleasure-inducing facets, there is something about scrolling through Instagram just before sleep that tells you it needs to stop or change in some way. Get curious about why that is – do you end up feeling more comparison fatigue than inspired after a scroll sesh? Does the light from your screen overstimulate your brain, making it difficult to adjust to the darkness required for sleep? I recommend writing this reason down in a place you can refer back next time you are cued to repeat the same action.

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With these 4 parts in mind, you can now start testing new actions to replace the old action, keeping the cue and the reward the same or similar!

So, the cue is still getting in bed. What is a new action you can take to give you that same feeling of cozyness and release that the Insta-scrolling once gave?

Brainstorm a list of things to try, and start with what jumps out to you most. Maybe it’s writing a letter to a dear friend or partner you can send them or text them the next day, if the desired feeling was connection. Or perhaps it’s reading an inspiring blog post or chapter of a biography if it’s inspiration you seek. Maybe it’s doing a yoga or meditation practice to actually clear your mind of negative self-talk, rather than momentarily escaping it.

You can set a different intention, and activity, every night if you find you need something different based on the day you’ve had. Just do something consistent, like journal first to set the intention: “I will read for 15 minutes before bed.”

Don’t forget to reach for your original habit-breaking intention when you feel tempted to go back to your old ways. Reconnect to the original feedback, and always note down the new feedback that comes from trying each action. The key is to refine the action as you go, until you find your sweet spot!

Motivation

Motivation is key to forming any new habit or ritual, not to mention understanding what makes you you as it relates to slaying your biggest goals.

As with habits, it’s important to bring a non-judgmental attitude to your personal motivation style. Everyone is motivated by some things more than others – the point is to learn what works for you.

There are generally 6 types of motivation – 3 sets of 2 opposing styles:

1. Conditional & Intrinsic:

For many of us, it helps to start with conditional motivation. I’ll go for a run if I can get the ice cream sundae immediately delivered to my mouth afterwards.

But over time, the reward stops having the same affect and can certainly be worse for us than never forming the habit in the first place! Conditional motivation tends to be unsustainable in the long-run.

Intrinsic motivation on the other hand is doing something because the process of doing it is a reward in itself. It could be that the artistic process for an artist being more valuable than selling the finished piece. Or maybe finding a career you love so much that you would do it even if you weren’t getting paid! 🙂

2. Proactive & Reactive:

If you consider yourself a procrastinator, chances are you are re-actively motivated. This means, in an extreme example, you only start budgeting and saving after the debt collectors leave you 72 voicemails.

The tipping point or cue for you is – something negative happens, then you make the necessary fix. A good practice for you could be to play with moving the original cue from a reactive place to a proactive one. Solidifying in your memory, through therapy or journaling, the negative effects of your current habits and revisiting them often, could help you become proactive in the future. E.g. setting up automatic payments before the bills are due!

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3. Self & Others:

I don’t find self-motivation and motivation for others to be as diametrically opposed as the first two sets of motivation styles.

Case in point – starting a self-care practice will not only benefit you enormously, but will also help you to become the best version of yourself for others, whether that’s a friend, colleague, mentor, employee, employer, parent, child, or partner.

But maybe the core of why you do it is sparked by either a genuine initial desire to love yourself more OR a recognition of a desire to be more present for others. We’re all connected, so when we care for ourselves, we care for each other. And vice versa. It’s like taking care of the environment – everybody benefits from this work!

It’s important to note, your motivation type might change activity to activity – for example, I am intrinsically motivated to work out. It has to be fun or I just can’t get behind it (Zumba, anyone?).

On the other hand, writing this blog is hugely motivated by a desire to help others. When I’ve tried to get amped about writing a post to promote my coaching practice or simply be creative, I haven’t been able to get it done. But when I learn something particularly juicy and think, My readers could benefit from this!, I am much more likely to take action on it.

Get to know your motivation styles. Is there a particular direction you lean toward with the 3 category types? Any new types you’d like to try to get yourself motivated behind a particular challenge?

Your Resilience IQ

As I’ve said again and again, there is no point in creating structure around your life if you don’t give yourself grace. Especially when it comes to self-care, practicing forgiveness when we don’t hit our goals is key. Not only is it the more non-judgmental, self-compassionate approach, but it actually increases our chances of try, trying again!

As I said earlier, just re-framing setbacks as feedback instead of failures can be a game-changer. This is where resilience comes in. Think about a particular setback you’ve faced recently when it comes to meeting your personal goals. For example, let’s take the goal of meditating for 20 minutes every morning, which you didn’t do this morning.

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1. Consider Community. What support system do you have in place? Have you shared this goal with someone who can hold you accountable? What online community might you find to help you achieve this? We have not evolved to be alone. We need other people. Learning to ask for help is foundational for developing your Resilience IQ.

2. Self-Confidence. How much do you believe in your own ability to meet this goal? If you have low self-confidence around this, what thought patterns can you shift or mantras can you introduce to help shift the inner narrative? Paying attention to the story you’re telling yourself about your own capabilities can often be enough to get the ball rolling toward a higher Resilience IQ.

3. Face the Challenge. Can you see the hurdles and roadblocks on your path toward meeting this goal clearly, for what they are? Reflect on each challenge in its full scope. Acknowledge why this path isn’t easy, and reconsider if it’s worth pursuing at all. It might sound pessimistic, but it’s the only way to genuinely embrace – and eventually meet – a goal.

4. Try, Try Again. This is where the feedback piece is key. What didn’t work before? What has worked with other challenges? Why will this new approach likely work on the next go ’round? Use all feedback as fuel to refine and reset again and again, until you find your sweet spot.

5. Remember Gratitude. What can you be grateful for, even when you face challenges? What do the setbacks teach you that you can be grateful for? Why are you grateful to even have this goal? Why are you grateful you are pursuing this goal? Talk about motivating! If you can not only use your setbacks as fuel for refining your approach, but actually be grateful for them – my friend, you’ve mastered the art of resilience. Your Resilience IQ is through the roof!

Remember, Dear Ones, deconstructing your habits, learning your motivation styles, and strengthening your resilience IQ are all ways to help you meet your beautiful goals! These are all tools for your toolkit. And they are completely worthless, in my book, if not wielded with the gentlest self-care.

Life Coaching Is Like Meditation

Life coaching is a beautiful, emerging field based on the philosophy that the client is the expert in their own life, and the coach is there to partner with them as an equal to draw out the wisdom they already have within them. I am currently training to become a life coach, and loving every minute of it!

On my coaching journey, it became clear to me very quickly that coaching is very much like meditation! Both practices require non-judgment, friendly curiosity, empathy, presence, space-holding, and trusting one’s intuition. Both favor learning and being over doing. It’s exciting that the tools I’ve been sharpening in my meditation practice will help me become the best coach I can be to my future clients! The similarities between the two have been so glaringly obvious that I wanted to share them with you, Dear Ones, as I continue on my journey.

Let’s start with the coaching notion that the client is the expert in their own life. The magic of coaching isn’t that you’re hiring someone to give you all the answers. You’re hiring someone to hold beautiful space for you, ask powerful questions, and hold you accountable as you journey to get from where you are to where you want to be. As a coach, it can be hard to not be seen as the expert and to not try to give advice to “fix” the client’s problem. Instead, this is radical presence that a coach brings to a client! As one of my fellow students said, “How often do you get to have someone show up with complete presence and hold the space for you to process and unpack what you are learning about yourself and your situation?” Almost never.

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This is because “level 1 listening” as we call it in coaching, is so prevalent in most relationships we have with friends, family, co-workers, etc. Level 1 listening is the kind of listening where you’re sort of listening to what the person is saying, but you’re also practicing and preparing in your head what you’re going to say next. You’re inserting yourself into every story and idea the person you’re listening to is sharing. This doesn’t make you a bad person – we all do it. It is completely natural and human. But, when we choose, we can instead use level 2 listening, which is much more effective for the person doing the speaking.

Level 2 listening is what we try to use in coaching most of the time. When you practice level 2 listening, you go on a journey with the client – savoring every word, change in tone of voice, even the body language that they use to tell their story. You try to imagine what it’s like to be them, and then get super curious about every aspect of their experience. In this way, you can be sure to hold the most present space for your client and are way more adept at asking the powerful questions they truly need. Instead of just focusing on the questions you’re going to ask next, you are able to pick up on powerful shifts in awareness, and instead riff with the client to where they really need to go.

Level 3 listening is even more rare, and happens when the coach is able to hold awareness for both the client and their own experience. It’s getting curious about what it feels like to be the coach listening to the client, without inserting your own ego reflection or agenda.

This transition from level 1 to level 2 listening can be challenging at first. It reminds me of my early meditation practice – and the subtle shifts in my relationship with my thoughts. Just as we are with others most of the time, I didn’t realize my unawareness of my own thoughts. Instead, I thought I was my thoughts, of course I didn’t even realize that I thought this. Vipassana (or insight) meditation really helped me slowly come to this realization and awareness of my own suffering caused by my thought-identification. Slowly but surely, I began to bring loving, non-judgmental awareness to my thoughts. I started getting really curious about my own experience, instead of just taking it for granted as I always had. From my bodily sensations to subtle nervous system shifts to thought patterns, I grew in an awareness of my inner life that I not only carry with me wherever I go, but that literally creates my reality.

That non-judgment part is key, both to coaching and meditating. The moment we assign “goodness” or “badness” to a thought, we attach ourselves to it, are dragged off course by it, and led inevitably to… you guessed it… suffering. It’s the same in a coach/client relationship. Whether expressed verbally or not, if a coach allows themselves a judgment of a client, the coach will be pulled off course from their goal of offering the most effective presence and partnership toward the client’s healing.

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Friendly curiosity, as my girl Tara Brach describes it, is also an essential quality for meditation and life coaching. Plain friendliness doesn’t necessarily lend itself to investigative questions. And curiosity lacking kindness can come off as pushy, intrusive and judgmental. But the dynamic duo of friendliness + curiosity magically brings awareness, to the meditator, and to the coach and client. Friendliness or kindness really shows up when the coach is able to be empathetic and fully place themselves in the client’s experience. How often do you really practice empathy? When was the last time you felt someone embody empathy for you? Just as other aspects of the coaching relationship, empathy is radical and can be a game-changer for the client’s desired shift. If meditation is a practice in pure awareness, then coaching is harnessing the power of awareness to transform one’s inner and outter lives, with the accountability and space-holding power of a coach. This is where open-ended questions come in.

Coaches ask their clients powerful, open-ended questions in order to draw forth clients’ inner resources. This isn’t from the point-of-view of a fixer, as in, “Have you tried this or this, or maybe that?” Instead, it comes from pure curiosity – “How did that feel? What would your life look like if…? Who would you need to become in order to embody XYZ..?” See the difference? One is like a nosy neighbor, and probably adds nothing new to what the client is considering, whereas the other potentially unlocks the client’s awareness and inner resources.

Another essential ingredient and by-product of both coaching and meditation is presence and space holding. What does it mean to hold space for another person? It looks like radical presence. Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now taught me just how delusional it is to be anything but present. He describes how most of us live in the past or future, but not even in the actual versions of the past or future. Rather, we spend most of our lives replaying a movie of the past that is colored by our emotions and can change on a whim. Or we foresee the future either as a bad, scary nightmare to be feared and prepared for or a romanticized idea we cling to. Embodying presence, on the other hand, is the only truth available to us. All we have is this precious moment, we might as well get to know it. A state of meditative awareness is a wonderful way to get curious about the present moment, our experience of it, and all we might be missing by “doing” rather than “being.”

Can’t you feel a visceral change when you shift from “doing” energy to “being” energy? For me, it’s like a settling – a beautiful grounding, like my vibrations start to match the earth’s. When I’m with another person practicing presence, they can feel it to. I notice their eyes brightening, recognizing, “Someone is really paying attention to me.” It feels a lot like love. It feels a lot like what we’re all really looking for, beneath all that past/future grasping. It feels real, like something holy. That’s presence. That’s space holding.

Someone once told me, “Everyone just needs a good listen.” And, the more I practice life coaching, the more I realize it’s so true! To have someone hold space for you is like having a container to place your thoughts in. The coach’s powerful questions help the client move past their initial identification with their thoughts toward the deeper meaning behind them and what they can learn from them. It can be hard, if not impossible, for us to do this work on our own. It helps to have a witness.

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Intuition is also exercised during both meditation and life coaching. I’ve noticed my intuition sharpening since I began meditating. Because I am more familiar with my thought patterns, how my brain works, and all my social conditioning – I can more easily sort through the bullshit and recognize the true. The “true” thoughts are my intuition – what my higher self unencumbered by the ego knows to be true and whispers to me when I get quiet. It’s much the same with coaching. A good coach will help her client sort through their beliefs and desires to uncover the power they already have within them. That’s what I love most about coaching! It requires the coach to die to their own ego in order to draw forth the client’s higher self. It’s like the work of meditation outside of the quiet, individual experience.

Meditation can sometimes be experienced as an inner battle between the ego (i.e. resistance, thought-identification, suffering, separateness) and the higher consciousness (i.e. one with everything, loving awareness, non-judgment). Coaching, then, may seem to be a relationship between the coach and client, but in reality, I think it is what happens when the coach’s inner experience meets the client’s inner experience and creates a new reality. The coach may appear silent and listening, when inside them there could be a battle raging between their ego (e.g. their desire to “fix” the client, appear as an expert, insert themselves in the client’s story) and their higher consciousness. The client, too, is experiencing more than what comes to the surface during the session. But if the client is able to be open and honest, in a state of trust with the coach, they get to have the experience of putting their thoughts out into conversation and see them for what they are. That experience helps the client tap into their intuition to solve whatever “problem” they wanted to focus on in the session.

The last thing I’ll say about the relationship between coaching and meditation is that both focus more on learning and being rather than doing. I put the “problem” in the last paragraph in quotes, because the coaching session pretty much always ends up being about more than the surface agenda the client comes in with. Through tapping into the client’s intuition, there is often a deeper agenda revealed. In fact, this is something we are trained to do as coaches – to ask questions focused on the client’s being 90% of the time, and ask questions about their “doing” only 10% of the time. We are coaching the client, not their problem. If a coach helps their client learn something new about themselves, how much more will that serve them than just giving them instructions to meet their goal? For example, if a client thinks all they need is time in their schedule to work out, but never addresses the underlying issue that they don’t think they are worthy of a healthy body, how does coaching serve them? On the other hand, coaching the client on their own worthiness could impact the client’s life in many areas – not just their work out schedule.

I love recognizing these ways that coaching is like meditation. It helps me drop into that state of pure presence and awareness with my clients. And it helps me be aware of my ego nature during a coaching session. The key is to be aware of it without judging it, and to recognize that both meditation and coaching are a practice. They aren’t something to be mastered, something to pass or fail at. The more time we dedicate to sharpening these tools, ultimately the more effective we can all be at creating a better world. I want to live in a world where people practice pure presence with each other, deeply listen, and learn to trust their own intuitive power. I want to live in a world where empathy, intuition, and presence are practiced fearlessly. May we all embody them and bring an end to suffering everywhere.

Psssst: Sign up below to hear more about my life coaching journey, and to get exclusive guided meditations right to your inbox!

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