courage

Discover 4 Obstacles Stopping Your Success

Are you letting your obstacles stop you from living the life we want?  Do you even know what your barriers are? Obstacles, blocks, and barriers fall into four categories. There’s Fear, Criticism, Resentment and Guilt. I’ll be explaining each of these, so you will be able to exam your own life to see what is stopping you from the life you desire.

Remember our experiences always reflect our inner beliefs and whatever you believe becomes your reality. If you want to know what your inner beliefs are, just take a look around at your life and environment. Look at your friends and family, are they happy, kind and supportive or do they always take your time, money and energy? What about where you work? Do you wake up happy to go to work or do you dread it.

Let’s go over the 4 Obstacles:

The first one is fear: What is fear anyhow?  F.E.A.R. = False   Expectations   Appearing    Real

It’s time to stop scaring yourself. How often do you terrorize yourself with your thoughts? You take your problem and blow it up, which make it worse, then you blow it up a little more. Now you worry about it, you lose sleep over it. You can’t get it out of your mind. It’s all you think about. The secret is, no one is doing a thing to you. It is your reaction and you’re thinking towards your problem. Why not make a list of your fears and turn them then around into the positive of what you want. Affirmations are a good way to turn your thinking around.

Did you know one idle thought doesn’t do a lot or make a lot of difference? You think 60,000 thoughts a day. But if you took that one idle thought and dwell on it with a strong emotion, then you have a lot of negative energy on that subject.

Let’s compare a thought to a drop of water. One drop doesn’t mean much, but if you keep adding to that drop of water, now you have a puddle on the counter that drips down to the floor where it turns into a pond. Now your house is flooded and the waters going out the door to make a lake. That lake turns into an ocean. Now you have an ocean with your accumulated thoughts, which are huge and there is a lot of power behind it. You can drown in the ocean of negativity or you can float on the ocean of life. It is all up to you.

What kind of puddle are you standing in? Or are you drowning in an ocean of negative thought? How are you thinking? What are you focused on? When will you be ready to change? Today is a good day don’t you think. We can change our experiences by changing our thinking.  

Sometimes an old thought comes back to us and rolls around in our mind. Well my friends, this is keeping you stuck. It is time to let it go and move forward. I found when this happens I just say, “Thanks for sharing, but the truth is…” and you fill in the blank with a positive statement such as, I am a wonderful person. I am successful. I am happy. You get the idea.

What you are doing is retraining your mind how to think. Did you know when you think a thought either positive or negative that it goes out and connects with others with the same thought pattern? Have you ever noticed a group of friends together and one group is laughing and having fun and the other group talks about illness and depressing stuff. Birds that flock together stay together. People that think a-like hang out together.

When we are learning something new it’s a good idea to be gentle with yourself. The last thing we want to do is beat ourselves up and go back to the old way. How do we finally know if we have really learned it? What you do is bring up the old situation again. It’s like were testing ourselves. We take a step forward and then backwards to see if we really have learned the new way. If you react the new way then you know for sure that you have gotten it. Now you can move on to something else.

The second one is criticism. Criticism keeps us stuck. Stop all criticism. Start first with yourself then move to other people.  Learn how to change the criticism to praise and approval. What you don’t like about yourself are patterns that you created to deal with a problem in your life.

Change the negative thought or criticism to praise. Say, “I like myself, I approve of myself, I am wonderful.” When you accept who you are, then you bring out the best in yourself. Procrastination is not loving yourself. I want you to know how wonderful you really are. A lot of people think I’ll be a better person if only… but what you’re really saying is that you’re not good enough. We want to overcome “not being good enough”. Be willing to Love and approve of yourself just the way you are and let all the negative stuff fall away.

The third one is guilt. People tell us negative things as a way to manipulate us. They lay guilt on us to control us and guilt is the easiest way to manipulate someone. Guilt never solves anything so don’t put guilt on others, just give out good intentions. What we give out is what we get back. Guilt always looks for punishment and punishment creates pain in yourself and others. 

If someone is laying guilt on you ask yourself, “What is it that they want?” Why are they doing this? Do you want to give it to them or not? You have a mind of your own and you’re an adult not a small child that needs to be controlled. What do you choose to believe is true for you now, today?

The last one is resentment. Resentment is unresolved anger. It is anger that got shoved down. Too many of us were raised where we weren’t allowed to be angry. Anger was not acceptable, so we swallowed down our anger. Swallowed down anger becomes resentment, which is now lodged down in the body. Resentment takes seed in the body and starts eating away at the body. We have to realize that we are the ones holding on to the resentment. No one else is involved. It’s like running an old movie in your mind over and over again. It is time to get over it and be free from it. We need to go beyond it. Resentment is only a thought and thoughts can be changed. Be willing to forgive yourself, the event and let go of the past. A good way to let go of resentment is to breath though it. Just feel the emotion and as you exhale and let it go. 

Now that we understand what our biggest obstacles, blocks and barriers are. There is one emotions that you can turn to and practice. That is love. Practice loving yourself. Praise yourself and what you do. Appreciate yourself, what you have and have do so far in life.

Love is one of the biggest healers there is. It stimulates your immune system and fights diseases. Dis-ease is a way we punish ourselves because we don’t love ourselves. People fight not loving themselves, but did you know when you were born, you loved yourself. You were perfect. It was society that taught you that it wasn’t ok to love yourself. Loving yourself is one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself. When you respect and appreciate yourself, it makes everything in your life flow. Today, why not tell yourself, “I am wonderful”. “I approve of myself”. “I’m ok the way I am”. Pick one and go for it or make up your own phase. Turn it into a chant and say it all day long, but most of all have fun.  

 

3 Mistakes of Manifestation

What I have noticed is that some people make a few mistakes when it comes to manifesting their goals and desires. These few mistakes prevent them from achieving their dream and deepest desires.

Here are the 3 mistakes of manifestation

The biggest mistake I found is that most people don’t really know what they want.

If you ask your friend what they want usually they tell you what they don’t want. For example: a friend and I were going to go out to dinner. We were deciding what type of food we wanted to eat. My friend said, “I had Mexican for lunch, so I don’t want that.” I don’t like Italian, so that’s out. How about a steak house? No, we don’t have enough time as we have to be at our destination in one hour. If we can’t make up our mind what we want for dinner how are we going to decide what we want in life?   

You create your reality with your thoughts and feelings. If you keep flip, flopping and jump from one desire to another without asking yourself, “Why do I want it?” or what is the reason why it’s important? You will never receive it. The reason and why are important to know. They help motivate you towards your desire. The key here is to get clear on what it is that you really do want and why is it important to you.

The second mistake is setting the wrong type of goals.

We often set goals that we think will bring us the happiness that we are searching for. The truth is that nothing outside of yourself can bring you happiness. Sure a new car or a beautiful new home will bring you happiness, but after a while that happiness fades. Then, you’re left wondering why aren’t  I happy? Or where did my happiness go?

In order to set goal that connect to your happiness you have to find out why you want what you want. One way to do that is by ask yourself a few questions to get clear on why you want it.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself…

  • Why do I want this?
  • How will it make my life better?
  • Who is it going to benefit besides myself?

The answers to these questions will help you get clear about the goals you are setting. Often we want things that don’t really matter all that much and we waste a lot of time and energy concentrating on the wrong type of goal.

The key here is to figure out the reason why you want that goal. What will it bring you? And what will that do for you? And why is that important to you? Keep drilling down until you get to the main reason.

That is your big why. Your big why will be your driving force, as you work on your goal. When I did this exercise I found out that the reason why I want a successful business is to help others.

Then, I kept drilling down.  What will that give me? And what will that give me and what will that give me? I uncovered that having a successful business would give me freedom, happiness, expansion, spiritual growth, connections, growth and then I uncovered my driving force to help others is all about fulfilling my mission.

 Now that you know what you want and the main reason why you want it.  The next step is to visualize it.  You can visualize sitting on a chair or in your car waiting for the stop light to change colors. Any time during the day and also during a meditation. Visualization simply means that you image our desired outcome for your future. When you visualize be sure to add feelings of excitement as you imagine yourself being or doing your desire.

The third mistake is thinking negative thoughts

We all have negative thoughts floating around in our head. They have been put there from our early childhood years. The key today is not to continuing think negatively and believe them or dwell on the negative thoughts.

The reason why according to the Law of Manifestation is what you think about you bring about. In one way or another you manifest everything you think about. The key here is to monitor your thoughts. When you find yourself thinking negatively. Cancel it or say, “Stop.”  Then say something positive five times in a row to cancel out the negative thought.

When we take the time to monitor our thoughts we can uncover the beliefs that stop us from creating our desire.  

Now that we have uncovered the 3 biggest mistakes to Manifesting and how to turn them around to create our desires. I curious which step are you going to start with first.

Are you going to sit down and get clear on what it is that you want and why you want it or are you going to pay attention to your thoughts and language?

 

 

In Chaotic Times, Change Is Calling You

  In Chaotic Times, Change Is Calling You

Life at times is chaotic, full of doubts and feelings of confusion. In this chaotic times, life challenges you to change. Usually it is time for an internal shift in the way we think that creates an external change that is seen in your life. When you are going through this transformation you feel as if you are being bounced between two worlds of confusion and clarity, success and failure, pain and pleasure. If you relax into the change you will be guide towards the easy path, but if you resist the change you will grow through difficulties and challenges instead of ease.

Change is happening all the time, but sometimes we are not aware of it. The reason why is because we do it every day.

The sun comes up, we wake up for a new day. We go about our day doing the same things, shower, eat and go to work. The sun goes down, we wind down to close out that day and rest during the night when the moon is up. It seems on the outside we are doing the same thing, but our thoughts or feeling are different each and every day. If we stop to think or feel what we are telling ourselves our day will change by our attitude.

The seasons change and transform every three months, so that the plants can rest, grow in spring, bloom in summer, let go of their leaves and dead flowers in the fall and rest again in winter. They don’t fight the change. The just do it, because it is their path. It is their job to change. In the middle of winter there are huge storms and high winds. The tall pine trees bend and flow with the strong winds. They are flexible. We could learn a lot from watching the trees in a storm.

When we go through a major change, a transformation in our life, our whole world changes. We become a different person, as our outer world changes. We can go through this change with ease or dragging our feet. In the beginning of change I think most people drag their feet, procrastinate and fight it, because no one likes major change. I know I do. Change disrupts our life. We have to think and feel in a new way. Something has to change in our outer life, a new job, divorce, death, birth or moving. With this new outer change the inner self is being stretched to grow and evolve.

One way to look at this expansion is with a new mindset. One could say, “I’m open to being stretched so that I can grow into a new being.” Or you could say, “All my experiences happen for my best and highest good.” It will help you go through the change a lot easier. Remember the pine tree bends and is flexible in the strong wind. Why not be like a pine tree and bend to the change and be flexible in the middle of the transformation. You will go through it a lot easier.

Now if you are having a really hard time with your productivity, a negative mindset or limiting beliefs. I would love to help you by rewiring your mind to money, wealth and abundance. I’m known as the abundant mindset expert who intuitively clears prosperity blocks. My specialty is shifting the inner game and releasing stuck emotions so that you can attract more money, success, prosperity and happiness in your life. Just email me at jolen@jolenphilbrook.com and put “mindset” in the subject line.   I would love to hear from you, bye

 

 

 

Get Something Done With This Hot Technique

Have you ever looked at your life and realized something needed to change? It’s like you’re at a standstill. You’re not moving forward. I looked at my life and I realized I wasn’t happy. It seemed that nothing was happening. See, I just officially broke up with the guy I was dating for two years and it’s been on again, off again for the last three month. The extra ten pounds are still hanging on since Christmas and now it’s April. My big goals weren’t getting done and the house is full of clutter. My life is a mess. It’s time for a change. Have you ever felt that way?

I decided to put myself on a 30 Day Productivity Challenge. The two areas of my life I wanted to change were my business and my eating habits. I spoke with a good friend who said she also needed to spice up her life and said she would do it with me.

 

Here’s the challenge I designed.

Wake up 5:30 am and meditate

7am check-in call.

Where I share what I’m eating that day and what type of exercise I’m going to do. Since I don’t exercise, my goal is to do 10 minutes of something. I’m deleting sugar, flour, dairy, alcohol, peanuts, beans and grains from my diet. Once a week is treat day and we are to share our successes.

7:15am ride my stationary bike or stretch

7:30am shower and breakfast

8am in the office- productive things

12:30 lunch

1pm in the office-productive things

3pm do unproductive things- errands, read, paint, housework, etc.

5pm walk

6pm dinner

7pm office- easy, no brain projects

8pm relax

9:30/10pm bed

To keep myself motivated I asked myself, “Why are you doing this?” I made a list of all the benefits. One list for my business and one list for my health. Sounds like a good plan doesn’t it.

Day 1: I woke up at 5:25am meditated and had my 7 am check-in call. I was in the office by 8:30am. Half hour late, not bad for the first day. I tracked my time all day and notice a simple errand took me 2 hours. A few Facebook post took an hour. My biggest observation was when I was procrastinating. I asked myself, “Why?” After a little talk with myself I buckled down and started working. I felt very successful about my day.

Day 2: I woke up at 6:45am feeling tired. 7am call we readjusted our program to wake up at 6am and sleep in on week-ends but still have 7 am call every day. I was in the office at 8am but by 9am I took a nap. I was too tired to work. Back in the office at 10:30 reminding myself why I chose to do this. What am I crazy? Why am I doing this to myself? I made it to lunch and after lunch I had to take another nap. By 4pm I was done for the day. Observation for the day: I was really tired and not feeling well. Took two naps and noticed it took longer to do things than I thought.

Day 7: Observation: I noticed I am going strong in the morning and get a lot of stuff done in the office. In the afternoon I’m tired and my energy is not as strong. I push myself to declutter the shelf in the bedroom or go through a pile of papers in the office. I’ve got to stop writing every down on little pieces of paper. Went out and bought a few notebooks to write in. One for ideas, one for projects, one for podcast, and one for blogs. Now it’s all contained and no more piles of paper. Yeah!

Day 10: Observation: I’m not getting up at 6am its more like 6:10-6:20am I’ve shorten my mediation time for sleep. I notice when I’m working on a project in the office and when it gets hard, I get distracted with something else like Facebook. I’m not putting in the productive hours to succeed. I notice that I’m stuck and now I’m able to get out of it faster.

Day 15: Observation: Wow! I’m half way through. I’ve definitely have been more productive. I just finished writing a sales page for my new program called Create Your Abundance Mindset. It’s a huge project and I just knocked a big hunk of it down. I’m so proud of myself. Funny thing is even the art work I’m painting for my son is ridged. He wants a painting like Piet Mondrian who paints in red, yellow, white and blue squares all trimmed in black.

The art world says its abstract, which I wonder about, because how can squares be abstract? Now I have to paint in straight lines. I don’t like straight lines. I like curves. I’m looking forward to the day I can go back to painting tall, breezy palm trees on the sandy beach of the beautiful blue ocean.

Well that’s it for now. I’ll have to keep you posted for the next fifteen day and how my 30 day challenge ended. If you find there is an area in your life that isn’t working I invite you to a 30 day challenge. Who know what you can accomplish. Just look at what I’ve done.

When is enough, enough?

When is enough, enough? How long do you want to struggle? How long do you want to suffer, stay stuck and unhappy? These were the questions, I asked myself.

See my life was bobbing along, nothing great was going on. As a matter of fact, I was gaining weight, just broke up with my boyfriend after two years. I was over working and not having any fun in life. It seemed like I was just getting by, making just enough money to pay the bills and some months I had to dip into my savings just to make ends meet. My biggest fear was that my saving would get used up and I’d run out of money. Have you ever had that thought or feeling?

When is enough, enough? How much longer do you want to live this way? I pondered these questions.

Then one night I had a dream. Now typically, I don’t remember my dreams, but this one I did. I think because it had a message at the end of it. Here’s the dream: My son and I were talking to a good looking man in the store. Next scene-my son and I were in the driver’s seat of the car, turned around smiling, waving and laughing to the man in the store. I noticed the car was rolling backwards down a curvy, windy road and picking up speed. I realized I had better drive.

The car was going around the corner to fast as I pump the breaks, nothing. I pumped the breaks and gain, still nothing. I down shifted to slow the car down.  The car spun around and now there was a fork in the road. The road ahead was long and smooth. The road to the right was up a mountain. I saw a car on that road, so I decided to take the mountain road.

All of a sudden I was traveling over huge grey granite boulders and the road disappears at the tip, top of the huge mountain. I’m hanging on to the steering wheel sitting with nothing but blue sky around me and grey granite boulders below. I scream out, “911, help!”

Next scene-there’s a room with three police 911 dispatcher’s, each one was sitting and looking at their computer screen. On the screen it looked like google maps with a red dot marking the location. They seem to be tracking the people and their location. One of the police says, “I’ve got a 911 cry for help.” The dispatcher’s chat among themselves and the next thing I know I’m being picked up and put on the smooth road and I drive off. End of dream.

Conclusion-it is my opinion from this dream that we are always being watched after. We have a choice to where we want to go in life. We can take the scary road full of rocks, boulders, struggle and hardship or we can take the easy, smooth road that is free sailing.  The choice is yours.

If you choose the hard road full of struggle. You will travel on this road until you call out for help. Saying, “I’ve had enough.” To me the 911 dispatcher were our guides watching over us. They can’t interfere with our lives until we ask for help. Usually we get into this mess only to realize that we can’t get out of it alone and that is when we turn to Spirit and ask for help. But what if we could ask for help along the way? Wouldn’t our lives be easier? Our life would be smoother and you would be living in the flow of ease and grace. It is all about choice and how you want to live your life. Today, I ask you, “When is enough, enough?” “How long do you want to struggle before you ask for help?”

How To Find Motivation When You Don’t Feel Motivated

Have you ever had one of those days where the alarm goes off and all you want to do is sleep for a few more hours? Your bed is toasty warm and you know how cold you’ll feel as you dart to turn on the heater. You are definitely not motivated to get up and get going.

Finally after hitting the snooze button a few times you crawl out of bed and grab your coffee. Then you get side track doing something mindless. You forget to do your morning routine of meditation, reading or exercising. Now you notice your day has gone sideways. Things are harder than normal, your feel out of sorts and can’t figure out why.

Did you know it the little decisions that we make that set the tone for our day? The decision you make first thing in the morning is pretty much how your day will play out. The good news is that it is changeable. 

Here are a few ways you can turn your day around, if it has gone sideways.

The first step would to become aware of how you are feeling and make that okay.  My making it okay to feel unmotivated you can move through the feeling easier, instead of fighting it all day long.

The second step would to do the next best thing for you. Think about what you want to accomplish? Our lives are about making small decisions to keep us moving in the right direction.

The third step would to take one action. The key here is to pick one thing to do and then do it. A lot of times we get distracted trying to do too many things. By taking action you are now moving in the right direction. If you feel like quitting and the project is half done tell yourself, “Just 5 more minutes, just 5 more minutes.” Use the 5 minutes a motivation to finish the project. Then celebrate when the project is done.  Do the Superman pose or athletic winner pose with arms over your head. Get the feeling of success! Yea! You did it!

Now you have yourself moving in the right direction. You’ll feel more energy, inspiration and motivation. This will help push you forward to the next thing you want to accomplish on the list. It’s like the domino affect where one small decision and action launches you in the right direction to build momentum.  It will help you save the day.

Embrace Your Struggle

Do you have a desire for Success or happiness in your life? But, right now you find yourself struggling through your life with tons of obstacles.

You may even feel stuck and find yourself procrastinating. You feel like an island with no support, abandoned, it’s you against the world. Or maybe you feel like you are moving backwards instead of forward, there’s not momentum. It’s like you are wallowing in the mud. Have you ever felt like that? I know I have. As a matter of fact, that is how I’m feeling right now as I’m writing this.

I’ve been working on launching my podcast for the last eight months. I’ve ran into technical problems, then my website got into a war between two hosting companies when I went to move it from the old hosting company to the new one.  I couldn’t get my logo right or my cover art. The list goes on and on.

Then the mental and emotional struggles started. The old ‘not good enough’ button was pushed. My self-talk was really defeating. I said stuff like “Who’s going to listen to the podcast?” “You’re not any good.” “No one will like it.” “It’s not very good.”  “I don’t know what I’m doing, who am I kidding.”  “I don’t know what I’m talking about.” To top it I started having panic attacks in the morning when I woke up and no one knew what I was going through because I went into hiding.

I had to get control of my mind and emotions. I gave myself a good talking to. I’ve been through this before and came out the other end. I’m a fighter. I made it through cancer twice, custody suit with no income. I’ll be dam if I’ll let this podcast get the best of me. I asked myself an important question, “What did I do to get threw it before?” I made a decision, enough is enough. Then what did I do? I got my mind and emotions under control. Okay I can do that again. I went into my program I teach my clients and started using the tools I used before to pull myself out of depression, cancer, custody suit, court.

I started embracing my struggles, so that I could move through them and come out the other side stronger. I looked at my struggles as the steps to getting to the other side of my dream. It was like a test from the universe asking, “How bad do you want this?” Are you willing to go through your doubts and fears to accomplish your dreams? I ask you, “What do you want and are you willing to go through the struggle to reach your desire?” It’s really a choice. How you want to live? For me I realized the key is to embrace your problems as you grow. Give it a try and let me know how it goes. If you need help I’m here for you. Just send me an email jolen@jolenphilbrook.com

Feeling Bad About Yourself? Maybe It’s Not Guilt, But Shame.

A lot of people think when they feel bad about themselves its low self-esteem or maybe its guilt, but then again it could be shame and we just don’t know it. Do You Have Hidden Shame? What is it and why do we have it?

Shame is an intense painful feeling of believing that we are flawed and unworthy of love and belonging. What is surprising is that this is a universal feeling among most people, except those who can’t show empathy or connection. They don’t experience shame. Shame is not the same thing as self-esteem or guilt. Shame is I am bad. I’m a total loser. I’m stupid. This is where you focus on yourself.

Shame is a feeling where self-esteem is a thought. If I asked you what are your strengths? Who are you? What are your limitations? We would take a moment to think about ourselves and assess where we are in relation to the question. The difference is we feel shame and we think self-esteem.

Guilty is I did something bad. Oh, my gosh! Why did I do that? That was a really stupid thing to do. Guilt is you have done something that is not compatible with your values. This is where you focus on your behavior. Shame is a feeling. Self-esteem is a thought and guilt is a behavior.

Shame leaves us feeling unlovable. Being loved and feeling we belong is a core need. We are wired for love and connection. We need to feel we belong. When we don’t have love, connection or belonging we will suffer with an emotional hurt. This is where one could use money to feel better or buy the love and connection that they so deeply desire.

Most people have shame, but they don’t want to talk about it. They may know that they have shame, but they like to keep it hidden. The problem is that the more you keep it hidden, the more you have it. Shame can’t survive when it is spoken about. Shame only works when we think we are alone in the pain. The moment you reach out and talk about what you are experience you have just brought shame up to the surface to be released. This is one way to heal your money worries.

 

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