One of the fundamental themes I weave into my work with coaching clients has to do with fully embracing and focusing upon what hurts in them and how they have learned to deal with or avoid their suffering. This is usually the antithesis of where they want to look. Usually people perceive the source of their suffering to be ‘out there’ in the circumstances and relationships of their lives. Most get lost in their stories about what is happening to them out in the world and they want to find a strategic solution to achieve their desired success. Many operate under the assumption that if they change the outside, the pain they feel inside will go away. This is true when you have a nail in your shoe, but when your pain is emotionally driven, external changes never yield permanent results.
Those seeking external solutions are typically residing in what I call “the land of if only’s.” It sounds like this: “if only so and so would change in the way I think they should, then my suffering would be relieved.” Or, “if only I could lose twenty pounds, then . . .” Or, “when such and such happens, then I will be really happy.” These are all forms of emotional hunger and wishful thinking.
There are several key problems with this approach:
1. The imagined happiness, if achieved at all, will be temporary at best and the hunger will return.
2. Attempting to sate emotional hunger displaces our focus away from the present into an imagined future that we then attempt to create.
3. We fail to examine the real source of our hunger, thereby forfeiting the possibility and opportunity of knowing what is really going on within us.
Emotional hunger runs far deeper than we imagine. For many, it expresses in addictive behaviors. As in the examples above, our hunger takes the form of present yearnings and cravings for something that we imagine will make us feel fundamentally better than we do. The fact of the matter is, the satisfaction of our hunger does not lie outside ourselves, but inside in the form of unresolved wounds from the past coupled with our early reflexive responses to pain and suffering that have now become autopilot reactions.
Consider the fact that when we are infants, in the absence of language, we are socialized to communicate our perceived needs by crying out to let our caregivers know what’s going on with us – “I’m hungry.” “I need to be touched and comforted.” “My diaper is dirty.” It’s a very effective way to get our needs met. However, if in adulthood we continue to empower others to determine our sense of well-being, we will live as victims rather than as authentic, self-empowered creators and participants in our own lives.
Most of us have been emotionally wounded as a child – often without anyone realizing it. If we have not healed that wound, we develop emotional baggage and adaptive behaviors that unconsciously seek to get the outside world to give us what we didn’t get emotionally as children. The impulse is to heal, but we go about it the wrong way. If we continue to cry out and make our problems other people’s problems and/or to see ourselves as powerless victims of circumstances or the behavior of others, we never learn how to handle our emotional challenges in a healthy way.
If you are in a persistent state of emotional hunger or dissatisfaction, you may need professional help in getting to the bottom of your own particular pattern, but personal observation can also yield amazing results. If you really want to sate your emotional hunger, you need to understand what beliefs are driving your experiences. Here is a process that should help you get to the bottom of it:
1. Pay attention to your own self-talk. If you repeatedly hear yourself saying things like the ‘if only’s’ listed above or some other statement like ‘I never . . . ‘ or ‘I always . . . ‘ recognize that every time you reach that conclusion you are claiming to believe that to be the truth. For example, if you have a belief that you never get what you want – guess what! You will make that a self-fulfilling prophecy.
2. Take ownership of the fact that you hold such a belief. Write it down and make a conscious choice to change your belief.
3. Pay attention to the ways that you repeatedly affirm your belief by creating, promoting, and allowing experiences that are consistent with that belief. Write down every example you see with enthusiasm and neutrality and never with self-judgment. Remember you are in the process of healing this pattern instead of remaining an unconscious victim of it.
4. Play detective gathering evidence of how and why you make the choices you make that keep bringing you what you do not want.
5. Pay attention to and document how it feels inside of you (physically, emotionally, mentally, etc.) when you do not get what you want.
6. Challenge your belief. Pose ‘what if’ questions to yourself of what might be so if you let go of your limiting belief. For example, if you hold the belief that no one will ever love you, be creative in breaking down that belief. Use affirmations that claim your worthiness – do them in front of the mirror with great enthusiasm – “I am lovable!” Play the ‘act as if’ game of behaving as if you are lovable, smile at total strangers and start letting other people in – open up to the possibility of being loved. Love yourself!
Remember that your beliefs are powerful self-fulfilling prophecies. The bottom line of this is that if you change your beliefs, you will change your experiences. You are not a victim unless you choose to be. Health and well-being in adulthood is not achieved through the accumulation of external successes, but rather through cleaning out your internal emotional closets.
Are You Letting Your Heart Sing?
As a mentor, I often find myself working on the same bottom line with clients — are you letting your heart sing? This is a powerfully loaded question that deserves some unpacking here.
First, let’s look at what it means to let your heart sing. Think of a time or times when you have been in your glory. It could have been a particular meeting, job, relationship, a song you sang, a book you wrote, or just a humble yet essential moment in your daily life. These moments typically engage a person in the flow of creatively expressing something they are deeply passionate about. It’s as though your body, heart, mind, and soul are in a personal harmonic convergence and you can feel your heart smiling. There is a fulfillment — a sating of a piercing hunger that has been building in your soul.
I’ve come to recognize that my heart sings best when I am experiencing a loving oneness with another — whether someone close to me, a client, or a total stranger. For example, I can be walking down the street and have my eyes meet deeply with the eyes of a stranger for the briefest of moments and zoom past all the things that normally prevent such an essential connection from occurring. My heart also sings when I am effectively being of service and when I am able to communicate well. What about you? What makes your heart sing?
Once you have identified one or several strong examples of you at your best, ask yourself some of the following questions:
Notice the question isn’t is your heart singing? It’s are you letting your heart sing? In this crazy world we live in, very few hearts simply sing anymore. It’s not that it is not important, but rather that we are too busy giving our attention to other matters. We need to make our lives conducive to allowing our song to emerge — even within the simple moments of our everyday lives. So, if your heart rarely or never sings, here are some things you might want to do:
There is only one you. So, please give voice to your most beautiful inner song and share it with the rest of us.
A Celebration of Value & Symbolic Wedding Rituals | Judith Johnson Wedding Officiant on Chronogram
I recently spoke with Chronogram on exploring unique ways couples can incorporate their deeper values into their wedding celebrations. Read the full article here.
The #1 Key to Living and Dying Well
Some of the greatest life wisdom is articulated by the dying. In her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, Bronnie Ware shares what she has learned about the dying by serving as a caregiver to many. She notes, “of all of the regrets and lessons shared with me as I sat beside their beds, the regret of not having lived a life true to themselves was the most common one of all. It was also the one that caused the most frustration, as the client’s realization came too late.”
So, what does it mean to be true to yourself? A lot of people throw around the term ‘authenticity’ to describe it. On some level this term suggests that there is a truth that resides within each of us that is unique to our specific being. It also implies that there is an opportunity to somehow maximize the experience of living our life and meeting our death that involves being attuned to that truth and living a life that is a reflection of that truth. But, how do we do this? How is that different from simply living and doing the best we can? What does it look like? What does it feel like?
In the process of living, we come to know things about ourselves – experiences we love and those that leave us unengaged. We discover certain talents, abilities, and inclinations within us. My favorite food group will always be chocolate, for example, that’s simply not negotiable. Each of us will have different preferences from the same menu in a restaurant – or the de jour offerings of a given day. As time goes by, if we pay attention – if we listen to that pure, inner voice that simply says an enthusiastic ‘yes!’ or an emphatic ‘no!’ – we come to learn that that voice seems to have our best interest in mind. It is not the voice of our ego preferences or greed. It comes from a far deeper place than that – I sense mine in the area of my solar plexis.
The real challenge is that there are other voices that we hear too and our inner voice of truth often gets lost in the shuffle. Our insecurities and fears speak to us. Our wants and desires demand our attention. Outer influences, norms, and authorities seek our allegiance as well. What do you do when your parents or teachers – the gods of your youth – are steering you in a direction that doesn’t match your fragile and emerging sense of self? When outer authorities or social norms insist you do or be something that is in conflict with your sense of who you are, what do you do? Do you trust the outer authorities, perhaps out of fear of the consequences of not doing so, or do you somehow hold to your inner truth, in spite of the judgment, rejection, and ridicule that might bring upon you? I know a man who paid a heavy price for following his passion to become a concert pianist when his father insisted he stay in Idaho to tend the family potato farm. What must it be like for a child who knows he or she is gay to survive and find a path through a family or world that will judge and reject them? What do you do when you know that how and what you are is likely to never be favored or acceptable to your family or the society you live in – even though you are a good person?
It’s ironic that it’s just not that easy to simply be yourself. But, maybe therein lies the secret to living and dying well. The real prize in life is to come to know your very own truth and to learn to be obedient to that truth in a way that does not harm others. They may not like it, but if we are lucky, we teach them how to love us in spite of our differences. We teach them to respect our ways of being and to let us be. You have to be willing to claim the privilege of being yourself in a social context. It’s not an easy path and typically takes dedication, devotion, endurance, and sometimes the willingness to proceed without the support and understanding of those we love. It requires listening to inner truth and figuring out how to honor it. It takes time to develop this inner attunement. But the prize is a peacefulness, an experience of being who you are rather than resenting yourself and others for what you didn’t get to do or be or have that was essential to you. To know that you are living your life with obedience to what you know to be your truth may be as good as life gets – especially when you find a community of support of others who are walking to the beat of their own drums as well.
Take a look at your life and ask yourself these questions:
As long as we live, it is never too late to be ourselves and to make peace with our choices and the people in our life (past or present). So, if you want to live and die really well, befriend, honor, and love yourself madly and deeply.
Picking Up Your Life
I recently came upon the expression “pick up your life” in a talk given by John Morton, the spiritual director of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness. This simple phrase captures the idea that we always have the choice to move our life to a higher level of expression. Whether you dream of being an Olympic star or simply see areas of your life that you would like to improve, it is your choice whether or not you take it upon yourself to lift yourself higher. Is it time for you to pick up your life? What might be possible for you?
It is so easy to pass endless days and years of our lives in a kind of stupor on autopilot spending and losing ourselves in the routines of daily life and to-do lists that get us nowhere. Sometimes life simply exhausts us and we lose sight of our dreams, our potential, and passions. But there is a heavy price we pay for stagnation and complacency. We become stalled out and stale and sometimes bitter. We lose sight of the power we have to choose to live our lives differently.
We are meant to evolve through learning and growing. These processes take place within us physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. We all have areas of our lives where we feel stuck or unfulfilled at times. That’s not a problem — it’s perfectly normal, and often the irritation required for us to choose to pick up our life.
So, how do you break out of a repetitively unfulfilling life or an irritation? The answer starts with believing that it is possible. Until you believe in the possibility of change, it simply cannot occur. Belief opens the door to taking action. It is the accelerator out of stagnation — beyond all the excuses and rationalizations that have kept you doing what you have always done, getting what you have always gotten. This is as true about small personal changes as it is about global issues. Momentum comes when you choose to do what it takes to manifest what you have come to believe is possible. You take ownership of your life and do something radically different. Radical need not be earth shattering. It is sometimes best to start with a baby step like making your bed each morning because you have come to believe as my friend, Lisa says, “making your bed each morning is the cornerstone of civilization.” Now, I appreciate that you may not hold bed making in such high regard, but sometimes the smallest change can make a world of difference.
While belief is the door opener and initial accelerant of change, momentum and eventual success come by taking consistent, appropriate actions in a clearly defined direction. Action is taken in the context of a vision of success and a plan of action. For example, over the past year I have been overcoming a lifelong challenge with excess body weight. Every single thing I have put in my mouth or chosen not to eat has been a conscious choice. In time, temptations receded, new habits formed and I began to have a love affair with vegetables. Who knew that was possible? Every step of the way I kept my eye on my goal and reinforced my belief that long-term success was possible and in the process of happening. I also chose to celebrate my mini-successes along the way to the momentum of gratitude. Someone once told me about an interview with Jack LaLanne, dubbed “the godfather of fitness.” The interviewer said “Jack, you must really love exercise” to which Jack abruptly and passionately responded “I hate it! I hate it! I hate it! I do it for the results.” When we believe in something, whether it is sustaining a healthy body or laying down our lives for a cause we passionately embrace, success comes in the followthrough.
So, here are some questions for you. Do you have any secret dreams for yourself that you have let slip by the wayside? Are you settling for less than you know you have in you? Have you given up on yourself or told yourself it is too hard or too late to change? I encourage you to come out from behind your excuses and disillusionment and pick up your life. Imagine what is possible if each of us believed in ourselves enough to manifest our greatest self-expression. Imagine if we believed that we all have that responsibility and accelerated our best selves into manifestation.
What is a Wedding Officiant?
What is a wedding officiant?
A wedding officiant is the person who leads your wedding ceremony. They must be legally recognized to do so by the state in which your wedding takes place. If you are having a religious ceremony, your officiant will need to be qualified in the eyes of that religious organization as well. Some religious groups specify where your ceremony must take place as well. For example, the Catholic Church requires that your ceremony take place within the church building.
The legal responsibilities of the officiant vary according to state laws. Generally speaking, your officiant’s signature on your marriage license signifies that he or she knows of no reason that you are not qualified to be married in that particular state. For example, you are of age or have parental consent, you are not currently married to someone else, or seeking a same sex marriage in a state that does not allow them. Their signature also means that they have witnessed you sharing your wedding vows and have officially pronounced that you are partners in marriage in the presence of witnesses (one or two of whom will also be required to sign your license).
In the past, most weddings were conducted either by religious clergy or civil officiants such as judges, justices of the peace, and ship captains. In recent years, it has become popular to have a friend or family member be your wedding officiant. This is accomplished by going on-line to sign up for ministerial credentials with a religious group such as the Universal Life Church that offers them without any requirements of training, dogmatic beliefs, or religious/spiritual practice. Their only requirement is that you ask to be ordained. According to their website http://www.themonastery.org/ordination they have granted over 20 million ordinations to date. On-line ordinations take advantage of the separation of church and state by limiting the legal right of the state to challenge the religious organization’s authority and rules regarding to whom they grant ordination credentials. Some states and local jurisdictions, however, are beginning to challenge the legitimacy of on-line ordinations, so be sure to check out any controversy in the jurisdiction where you plan to be married.
In addition to the legal and religious/spiritual considerations regarding who you choose to have officiate at your wedding, it is important to think about what is and is not important to you about your wedding ceremony. For example, what does it mean to you that you are getting married? Do you need to take into account anyone else’s point of view on the matter? Are you looking for an officiant who you are comfortable with? Do you need someone with enough experience to know how to assist you in your ceremony design, as well as to conduct both the rehearsal and ceremony itself?
Whether you are choosing to have a friend or family member officiate or are looking for a seasoned officiant, be sure to consider how their personality style, personal beliefs, and understanding of their role will influence your ceremony. Typically, your wedding officiant will have the greatest influence in setting the tone of your ceremony, so choose wisely.
Many couples are clueless of where to start to find a qualified wedding officiant. Here are some suggestions:
Above all else, your wedding officiant should be able to serve as your go-to person for all your questions and concerns about your ceremony. Choose someone who can serve you well and help you keep on top of all the details. While your ceremony may last only fifteen to twenty minutes, there are a myriad of big and little details that when handled well can add up to exactly what you wanted, but when overlooked can result in a clumsy and disappointing event.
7 Steps to a Fabulous Customized Wedding Ceremony
Do you want to create a ceremony that clearly reflects your unique values, beliefs, and life circumstances? Do you know how or what is required? A good place to begin is to check out any requirements that the state has where the ceremony will take place. Most states want you to speak your vows in front of at least one witness who then signs the license, to meet the requirements for marriage in that state, and to have a qualified officiant. Beyond that, if there is no religious authority involved, you start with a blank sheet of paper. Don’t worry – I’m going to make this easy and fun for you! Just follow these steps.
Step One: Make sure you are both onboard to personalize your ceremony.
Remember there are two of you involved and the ceremony should be the best match for the two of you possible.
Step Two: Decide to have fun with this process.
Even though this is probably the first wedding ceremony you have ever designed, it is a wonderful opportunity to create a celebration of your union in rituals and words that will create beautiful memories to carry forward with you. Remember that this is your wedding and while family members and friends may have strong opinions about your ceremony – you two are ultimately in charge of deciding what is just right for you.
Step Three: Separately answer the following questions in writing and then share your responses with each other.
The best ceremonies truly reflect both spouses – so don’t let your partner cop out and say whatever you want is fine. Here are the questions:
Step Four: Consider the following guidelines:
Step Five: Do your research.
There are wonderful books and websites available to give you great ideas of what works, what doesn’t, and how other couples have successfully customized their ceremonies. Of course, I simply must tell you that my book, The Wedding Ceremony Planner: The Essential Guide to the Most Important Part of Your Wedding Day is actually the bestselling book on wedding ceremony design for both clergy and couples. If you choose to use it, I hope it’s a wonderful resource for you.
Step Six: Keep it short and simple.
You can create a beautiful and memorable ceremony that takes no more than 15-20 minutes. In my experience, a ceremony that goes much longer runs the risk of creating fidgety, bored, and impatient guests. For example, you may lose the attention of your guests by including more than two readings.
Step Seven: At your ceremony – breathe, relax, keep your sense of humor, and be present in your loving.
No matter how carefully you plan your ceremony – there will be surprises. When the ceremony begins, all you really need to do is to look into the eyes of your beloved, breathe deeply, and feel the joy in your heart. What a magnificent moment in life and what a shame to miss it because you are worrying about some detail or find yourself overcome with nerves. The greatest gift you can give yourself and each other is to be fully present in the loving that brought you both to this moment. You can only focus your attention on one thing at a time. So, let it be the joy, loving, and gratitude you feel to be joining together I marriage, rather than worrying about whether or not the caterer got your message about the olives. Just breathe, smile, and feel the loving.
Are You Suffering Unnecessarily?
Do you often find yourself saying “It isn’t fair” or thinking you have more than your share of suffering? Do you play the story of “what happened to you” over and over in your mind like a hamster running in his wheel? Consider the possibility that there IS something you can do about that. The place to start is by distinguishing between unavoidable suffering that is a necessary part of life and the kind of suffering that we create for ourselves.
“Necessary suffering” seems like a strange concept to most people. But, consider the fact that no one gets to escape some form of pain in response to the trials and tribulations of life. You fall and skin your knee – ouch! A friend lets you down or disappoints you in some significant way – sadness. Someone you love and treasure dies – deep grief. In other words, there are the kinds of suffering that come with the territory of being alive. Perhaps you have also noticed that these kinds of unavoidable suffering can become steppingstones to greater wisdom and understanding if you look at them in the right way. Otherwise, you may obsess about them or they become a constant irritant like a stone in your shoe that you don’t realize you can remove. The necessary suffering of life also has a way of getting us to draw closer to one another and to comfort one another in ways that are deeper and less common than we find in everyday life when everything seems to be moving along beautifully.
According to psycho-spiritual teacher, Robert Augustus Masters, the unnecessary kind of suffering is the kind that is a direct result of the stories we tell ourselves about our painful experiences. Unnecessary suffering happens when we get so caught up in either focusing on our necessary suffering in our minds or telling our tales of woe to others. When this happens, we cause ourselves to suffer more than we need to because of the fact that we are intensifying our suffering by focusing our attention on feeling the pain.
Masters advises that we can minimize our suffering by entering into the pain that comes our way and moving through it rather than replaying it over and over like a broken record. To illustrate this distinction, imagine the difference in experience of a birthing woman who is actively working with her breath to move through the pain of her labor versus the one who is busy resisting her pain and screaming about how much it hurts. The path through our pain is to accept its presence rather than to resist it by trying to get away from it. Ironically, we create unnecessary pain by the very act of resisting pain. In other words, through resistance, we focus upon our pain, draw it to ourselves, and attach ourselves to it.
Our point of view – our attitude toward suffering makes all the difference in terms of how much we suffer. In a TED Talk, BJ Miller referred to perspective as “that kind of alchemy we humans get to play with, turning anguish into a flower.”
So, next time you start throwing a pity party for yourself, change your point of view so you can change your experience. Try one of these methods:
1. Expand your perspective to entertain the good news that is coming with the bad. In other words, appreciate the half full part of the glass you are only seeing as half empty. My friend, Barbara Sarah, the founder of the Oncology Support Program at HealthAlliance of the Hudson Valley in Kingston, NY shared a list that one of her students in a Constructive Living program made of all the people who she was grateful to for helping her care for her hospitalized husband. 105 people! As the list grew, so did her gratitude to people like the person who supplies the “lollipop” mouth moisturizers, the pre-admission secretary who greets you and sets up your test schedule, the gardener who cares for all the plants in the public areas, and the staff who buzz you in the surgical ICU. So make a list of all the things in your life that are also true blessings while you are suffering and see if you don’t find yourself becoming so grateful that you forget a bit about your pain. This is about finding and restoring balance inside yourself.
2. Give yourself a deadline to finish your pity party. Give yourself 5-10 minutes to really get into all your complaints and suffering. Exaggerate the immensity of your pain and feel really sorry for yourself until the timer goes off. Then, choose to shift your focus onto doing something really thoughtful or supportive for yourself or someone else. Don’t allow yourself to start grabbing onto your pain again. If it hurts, breathe into it and keep going. Ask yourself, “Is there anything constructive I need to do about my pain?” If the answer is “yes” then do that, if it is “no” then make the choice to place your focus elsewhere.
3. Pray for your highest good. Prayer, in its highest form, is about trust and laying down your burdens – surrendering to that which is beyond our comprehension. This kind of prayer is beyond personal preferences or judgments of what “should” or “shouldn’t” be happening. It acknowledges that there are forces present in our lives that are beyond our understanding. By praying for the highest good in whatever the situation is, we appeal to the benevolence of whatever forces are at work in our lives and surrender our burdens to these forces. In other words, we acknowledge that what will happen is beyond our control and we accept that and go on about our business of living the best we can.
4. Decide to make fabulous lemonade out of your lemons. My spiritual teacher, John-Roger always advised using everything for our upliftment, learning, and growth and that advise has served me very well in the hardest of times. This is a matter of choice. We have the option of shifting the message we send ourselves about our suffering from “poor me, this is terrible” to “I wonder how I can work with this to lift myself up, to learn, and to grow.”
The bottom line is we have far more power over the degree of our suffering than most of us imagine. When we stop accentuating the negative, we make more room for better options to be the focus of our attention.
How Did You Get to Be the Way You Are?
One of the fundamental themes I weave into my work with coaching clients has to do with fully embracing and focusing upon what hurts in them and how they have learned to deal with or avoid their suffering. This is usually the antithesis of where they want to look. Usually people perceive the source of their suffering to be ‘out there’ in the circumstances and relationships of their lives. Most get lost in their stories about what is happening to them out in the world and they want to find a strategic solution to achieve their desired success. Many operate under the assumption that if they change the outside, the pain they feel inside will go away. This is true when you have a nail in your shoe, but when your pain is emotionally driven, external changes never yield permanent results.
Those seeking external solutions are typically residing in what I call “the land of if only’s.” It sounds like this: “if only so and so would change in the way I think they should, then my suffering would be relieved.” Or, “if only I could lose twenty pounds, then . . .” Or, “when such and such happens, then I will be really happy.” These are all forms of emotional hunger and wishful thinking.
There are several key problems with this approach:
1. The imagined happiness, if achieved at all, will be temporary at best and the hunger will return.
2. Attempting to sate emotional hunger displaces our focus away from the present into an imagined future that we then attempt to create.
3. We fail to examine the real source of our hunger, thereby forfeiting the possibility and opportunity of knowing what is really going on within us.
Emotional hunger runs far deeper than we imagine. For many, it expresses in addictive behaviors. As in the examples above, our hunger takes the form of present yearnings and cravings for something that we imagine will make us feel fundamentally better than we do. The fact of the matter is, the satisfaction of our hunger does not lie outside ourselves, but inside in the form of unresolved wounds from the past coupled with our early reflexive responses to pain and suffering that have now become autopilot reactions.
Consider the fact that when we are infants, in the absence of language, we are socialized to communicate our perceived needs by crying out to let our caregivers know what’s going on with us – “I’m hungry.” “I need to be touched and comforted.” “My diaper is dirty.” It’s a very effective way to get our needs met. However, if in adulthood we continue to empower others to determine our sense of well-being, we will live as victims rather than as authentic, self-empowered creators and participants in our own lives.
Most of us have been emotionally wounded as a child – often without anyone realizing it. If we have not healed that wound, we develop emotional baggage and adaptive behaviors that unconsciously seek to get the outside world to give us what we didn’t get emotionally as children. The impulse is to heal, but we go about it the wrong way. If we continue to cry out and make our problems other people’s problems and/or to see ourselves as powerless victims of circumstances or the behavior of others, we never learn how to handle our emotional challenges in a healthy way.
If you are in a persistent state of emotional hunger or dissatisfaction, you may need professional help in getting to the bottom of your own particular pattern, but personal observation can also yield amazing results. If you really want to sate your emotional hunger, you need to understand what beliefs are driving your experiences. Here is a process that should help you get to the bottom of it:
1. Pay attention to your own self-talk. If you repeatedly hear yourself saying things like the ‘if only’s’ listed above or some other statement like ‘I never . . . ‘ or ‘I always . . . ‘ recognize that every time you reach that conclusion you are claiming to believe that to be the truth. For example, if you have a belief that you never get what you want – guess what! You will make that a self-fulfilling prophecy.
2. Take ownership of the fact that you hold such a belief. Write it down and make a conscious choice to change your belief.
3. Pay attention to the ways that you repeatedly affirm your belief by creating, promoting, and allowing experiences that are consistent with that belief. Write down every example you see with enthusiasm and neutrality and never with self-judgment. Remember you are in the process of healing this pattern instead of remaining an unconscious victim of it.
4. Play detective gathering evidence of how and why you make the choices you make that keep bringing you what you do not want.
5. Pay attention to and document how it feels inside of you (physically, emotionally, mentally, etc.) when you do not get what you want.
6. Challenge your belief. Pose ‘what if’ questions to yourself of what might be so if you let go of your limiting belief. For example, if you hold the belief that no one will ever love you, be creative in breaking down that belief. Use affirmations that claim your worthiness – do them in front of the mirror with great enthusiasm – “I am lovable!” Play the ‘act as if’ game of behaving as if you are lovable, smile at total strangers and start letting other people in – open up to the possibility of being loved. Love yourself!
Remember that your beliefs are powerful self-fulfilling prophecies. The bottom line of this is that if you change your beliefs, you will change your experiences. You are not a victim unless you choose to be. Health and well-being in adulthood is not achieved through the accumulation of external successes, but rather through cleaning out your internal emotional closets.
Advance Healthcare Planning Part One: Not Just for Old People
There’s been a big push in recent years to educate the public about Advance Healthcare Planning (AHP). The focus has been primarily on the forms you need to fill out and why they are so important. But, there is so much more to it than filling out forms that is far more important and will be discussed in Part 2 of this article. For now, let’s focus on what Advance Healthcare Planning is and who needs it.
Advance Healthcare Planning is about providing clear and convincing evidence of your wishes in the event of a life or death health crisis when you are unable to speak on your own behalf. Here’s how AHP works. The legal requirements, forms, and recommendations for expressing your wishes are regulated by each state and vary from state to state. There are lots of great websites that will let you know what is required in your state. One of my favorites is http://www.caringinfo.org. It provides extremely clear information about AHP, what you need to know, and provides downloadable forms for each state. If you are someone who spends a significant amount of time in a second or third state, such as many “snowbirds” do,” be sure to fill out forms for both states and carry them with you when you travel. This is important because not all states have reciprocity with one another.
Generally speaking, there are two documents involved. The first is a Healthcare Proxy, which is a legal document in which you empower someone else to speak on your behalf regarding end-of-life healthcare. The second is a Living Will, which is not a legal instrument, but is intended for the purpose of giving specific information about what kinds of life sustaining treatments you do and do not want. Unfortunately, most of us have been presented with these documents as part of a package of forms that we are filling out with our attorney as part of our estate planning or we are asked to fill them out when being admitted to the hospital. As a result, we rarely understand their full implications and intricacies and fill them out in a rush.
Now, let’s look at who needs a healthcare proxy and a living will. The answer is simple – every adult who is mentally competent. I know, most people think you don’t need to worry about this stuff until you are old, but the reality is you don’t have to be old to die. Death and health tragedies happen every single day to healthy young people texting in cars, drinking and driving, on the football field, in domestic disputes, and innumerable other ways. For example, we have a new baby in our family who was just named after his mother’s brother who died at the age of 17 in a bizarre car accident.
Dealing with these realities is hard in a society that perpetuates a death taboo that makes us not want to think about, talk about, or deal with the realities of aging, dying, and death. However, educating ourselves about these normal parts of life and taking responsibility for ourselves by living with our affairs in order is a matter of personal responsibility. Plain and simple, there are two great reasons for tending to your advance healthcare planning. First, it is the only way to make sure that your voice is heard if and when a health crisis arises and you are unable to speak for yourself. Second, it avoids family trauma and squabbling over what should or shouldn’t be done for you in time of crisis. So, if you don’t yet have your advance healthcare plans in order, what possible good reason do you have? Please, please, please make this an urgent priority. And, please read Part 2 of this article, which will provide lots of the ins and outs and intricacies of how to really make sure your advance healthcare plans work for you.
Inside the World of an Event Planner: Behind the Scenes at Tracy Taylor Ward Design
Image courtesy of Tracy Taylor Ward Design.
Where do you begin when you need to find a wedding or event planner? How do you figure out who to contact and what you need to find out about them? These are the questions that inspired me to interview and write about a number of event planners. The first is Tracy Taylor Ward of Tracy Taylor Ward Design, a smart and extremely well-organized professional who has quietly taken the event industry by storm.
When I met Tracy, she struck me as a stunning, gracious, enthusiastic woman with impeccable taste, who truly knows and loves what she is doing. A chat about her background helped me to understand why she is so well-suited for her work. It’s as though she was apprenticing for the job all her life and didn’t know it until a few years ago.
Check out this slide show of images of Tracy Taylor Ward Design.
The Back Story:
Tracy grew up in New York City where she developed a taste for fine food, fashion and music. Following in her father’s footsteps, as a child she discovered her passion for music and sang in television and radio commercials. She learned about interior design from her mother, Lauri Ward, the founder of Use What You Have Interiors, after graduating from Northwestern University. Upon returning to New York, Tracy worked on and off-camera as a decorator at her mother’s design firm after receiving her certification in interior decorating. She also became MTV’s dorm decorator, transforming college student housing on camera, as well as a host/decorator on HGTV’s hit series, FreeStyle.
The next building block that would eventually become Tracy Taylor Ward Design was meeting and falling in love with Matthew Carrigan, a graphic designer and illustrator, at an open mic night for singer-song-writers where they were both performing. When the couple became engaged in 2009, they decided to pool their talents and design their own wedding. It was during this time that Tracy discovered she loved researching and coordinating vendors, negotiating contracts and overseeing the entire wedding planning process.
At the same time, Tracy volunteered to facilitate planning for her best friend’s wedding in Miami so her friend could be with her mother who was hospitalized. A year later, in 2010, when both weddings took place, the pictures of the events were posted on social media sites and quickly spread. Emails and phone calls started pouring in with requests for Tracy to design weddings and within months Tracy Taylor Ward Design was launched.
Inside Tracy Taylor Ward Design:
Beneath her gracious demeanor, Tracy seems to be a very determined, proactive individual who accomplishes what she sets out to do. She takes tremendous satisfaction in making her clients happy by providing great value, both with her in-house services and industry connections. While the company is growing rapidly, Tracy is careful to limit the number of large events the firm contracts to ensure that she and her staff can provide unparalleled customer service. Although the company began as a wedding planning business, satisfied clients have brought Tracy and her team into producing a variety of other events as well. The business has grown predominantly by word of mouth. Typically, new clients have attended one of her events or have received her name from someone in their social circle. The firm’s clients are successful professionals with discriminating taste.
Based on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, but producing events worldwide, Tracy Taylor Ward Design develops, coordinates and delivers full-service, full-spectrum design rather than outsourcing most aspects to various vendors. While Tracy handles all design consulting and planning with her team of coordinators, Matthew heads Paper With Benefits, the company’s graphic arts division, which helps clients create one-of-a-kind designs for their invitations, reception stationary and artwork. Tracy’s in-house production team handles all styling, flowers and décor, including customized furniture.
The company’s style would best be described as elegant, classic and chic. Tracy sees to it that each event is so personalized that guests leave feeling they know the couple better than they did before attending. Her clients are able to look back and feel they would make exactly the same choices, again.
One of the things I liked most about Tracy was that she is as focused on the quality of the planning process as she is on the event itself. Clients quickly learn they can trust her because she removes any uncertainty by keeping them well informed each step of the way. She saves her clients time, helps them to establish and stick to a realistic budget, and then secures the best value with each of their vendors. Above all else, she strives to make the process fun and relaxing for her clients; from the day they hire her until the event is over. Recent bride, Christy Ely, said:
I cannot tell you the number of people who told me that it was the most beautiful wedding they had ever attended and who called it ‘magical.’ It truly was everything and more than I had hoped it would be. I knew that the day would not be anything less than spectacular with Tracy’s hand guiding it, and that gave me the security to relax up until the very last minute!
There is no doubt that Tracy Taylor Ward means business and by consistently exceeding her clients’ expectations; it’s no wonder that her sought-after firm has quickly earned a stellar reputation.