Live Your Best Life!

Do you tend to see and focus on the negative aspects of a situation? “Disqualifying the positive” is what is referred to as a thought distortion, or a cognitive distortion. What this means is that your brain observes a situation and filters in the negative aspects of the situation and ignores, or discounts any of the positive aspects of the situation. If you are someone who experiences this, you are not alone. Our brains have what is called a “negativity bias” which causes them to highlight the negative things around us, while bypassing positive things. 

The reason it does this is because, typically when you are experiencing negative things, you also experience negative emotions. This can raise an alarm with your brain because with negative emotions comes discomfort. Your brain does not want you to experience this discomfort, and it thinks that if it continues to focus on the negative thing that somehow it can prevent it from happening again and...

Why is it that some people keep going and keep working towards their goal, even when things are challenging, and others give up? Many people attribute this to motivation which does play a role, however, as a motivation expert, I can tell you that motivation alone won’t cut it. Motivation is defined as, “the general desire or willingness of someone to do something”. Being really clear about “why” you want to achieve something is tied to motivation, however, when you are working towards a goal and things get challenging, it can be very easy for motivation to decrease. Your desire to keep going is challenged when things get uncomfortable because it is human nature to want to stay in your comfort zone. 

Drive, on the other hand, is easier to sustain and can help you power through when things get hard. The definition of drive is, “an innate, biologically determined urge to attain a goal or satisfy a need”. While motivation taps into your...

Many people are great at figuring out what they want to achieve and mapping out their days, weeks, or months so that they can get done what they want to. The problem comes when the days, weeks, or months go by and there has not been much movement towards what they wanted to get done. They tell themselves something is important and that they want to get something done, however, they end up feeling unproductive and like they are not making progress.

Can you relate to this, at least on some level? You said you were going to make ten calls to potential customers at work, and you only made five. You said you were going to workout 5 days this week, and you only worked out twice. You said you were going to finish your project a day ahead of its due date, and you didn’t get it done until the last minute. You said you were going to organize your closet, but it is a month later and it is not done. You said you were going to make a budget and get on track with your finances, however,...

A pressure cooker is a sealed chamber that traps the steam generated as its contents are heated. As steam builds, the pressure increases, until the boiling point of water is above 212°F.”

As humans, metaphorically, we can function like pressure cookers too. We start our day with our stress or anxiety level at a certain point, however, things can happen throughout the day that continue to fuel our stress and anxiety. If the stress or anxiety continues to build, we hit a “boiling point”. It is often too late before we notice that we are almost at our boiling point, which can make it much harder to bring our stress and anxiety back down. In addition, once we hit that boiling point, we sometimes say or do things that we regret, which increases our stress and anxiety even more. 

We have over 60,000 thoughts per day, so there is no way we can be consciously monitoring all of the thoughts we are having in response to what is happening throughout our days....

Do you have a “not to do” list? If you don’t, you should consider it! A “not to do" list is a list of things you are trying not to do at all, or not to do at certain times of your day / week, so that you are freed up to focus on other things. We all live in a world where there is a finite amount of time yet it seems like some people are higher achievers, get more done, or seem to have more time for fun and relaxation. Why is that when we all have the same twenty-four hours in our day?

I don’t believe that everyone who seems to be getting the results they want in their life is grinding it out each day, not sleeping, or that they have superhuman powers. I believe the reason is that they have clarity and prioritize what they want to get out of each day, week, month, and year. They are saying “yes” to the things they want more of in their lives and saying “no” to the things that don’t move them towards what they truly want. If...

Recently I was working with a client who was finally able to uncover how terribly she speaks to herself. She regularly says things like, “I messed that up”, “I will never have enough time”, “I don’t ever follow through with things”, and “I’m always disappointing people”. It has become a habit for these phrases, or other phrases like them, to run through her mind. In addition, she always takes the blame when things don’t go well, and rarely takes the credit when things do go well, because she does not want to seem like she is bragging.

Do you see how problematic this can be for her self-esteem, for her overall emotional state, and for her confidence regarding being able to accomplish the things she really wants in her life? Her thinking pattern had become so routine that she was not even questioning the accurateness of her thoughts. She was just accepting them as true, even if there was plenty of evidence to prove...

Do you know why so many people don’t achieve their goals or live the life they say they want to be living? It is because they don’t believe that they can actually achieve what they say they want. If you don’t firmly believe that you can do something, be something, or achieve something, then you will unconsciously hold yourself back over and over. The reality is, if you want to do something that is challenging, you likely do not have the skills, strength, knowledge, means, etc. to do it today. If you did, you would already be doing it, right? 

However, it does not mean that you can’t acquire the necessary skills and knowledge, build your strength, or increase your means so that you can accomplish your goal. In order to do that, however, you must first believe in yourself and believe that with work and focus, you can achieve something that you have never achieved before. This is critical because if you don’t actually believe in yourself, you...

Do you ever find that you keep moving things on your “to do” list from one day to the next? From one week to the next? From one month to the next? How about from one year to the next? I can relate to this. I like lists and I like crossing things off lists, however, I recently realized that I was carrying over more things from one list to the next instead of crossing them off. When I looked into this further, I realized that two things were happening. First, the items on the list that were just for me, and did not involve others, were the items getting bumped. Second, I realized that of the items just for me that were getting bumped, they were the hard things, the boring things, or the things I not confident would turn out exactly as I wanted them to.

The tasks that involved me getting something done for someone else, showing up for someone else, or involved someone else in any way were getting done. It was the things that were just for me, about me, or that did...

Did you start the new year excited about what was possible for you? Did you start the new year with a plan for what you wanted to achieve? Maybe it was a health goal, a financial goal, a relationship goal, or a career goal. Maybe it was that you wanted to start a new hobby, learn a new language, sign up for a class, or get your house organized. Whatever it was, weren’t you excited when thinking about it? Are you still as excited? Have you made progress towards it?

If the answer is “no” to either you are no longer as excited, or that you have not made progress towards it, you are 100% normal and this is for you. Keep reading so that you understand why this happened and learn how to get some forward momentum. I absolutely love to dream and to think about all the things I want to do and learn. I can make lists for days. I can schedule my projects and plans out with color codes and be really organized about how and when I am going to work on my goal(s). Can you...

You have probably heard the statement, “manage your thoughts and manage your life”, or some version of this. What I think can be confusing for many is really understanding what this means, and more importantly, how to actually do it. I believe that our thoughts dictate the outcomes we get in our life. I also believe that many of our thoughts are unconscious, so they are running the show without us even knowing…until we decide to pay attention.

You have tens of thousands of thoughts each day so there is no way it would be possible for you to see them all and decide if they are serving you or not. Many of your unconscious or “autopilot” thoughts remind you how to do things like brush your teeth, drive your car, run the washing machine, or use your phone. Some of your other unconscious thoughts impact how you feel, what you believe about yourself and the world, and the actions you take in your life. Sometimes you are aware of the thoughts that...